


In the Shadow of the Mountain

by flollius



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: Basically an LOTR rewrite from Erebor's POV, Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, Because i don't have enough on my plate, Did I say fix-it?, Durin Family Feels, F/M, Fíli Whump, Goddamn that kid is just my fandom whipping boy, I haven't done that yet, I meant prolong the suffering, Kili whump, LOTR side-fic, Let's write another fic where Kili gets fucked up, Slight Ableism, Thorin's A+ Parenting, is present too though so it's OK, kiliel - Freeform, like a lot, of course
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:35:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flollius/pseuds/flollius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Middle-Earth arms herself against the growing threat of Sauron, the remaining three dwarven rings of power fall into Erebor's possession. Ageing and cynical, Thorin longs to restore Erebor to her former glory. Kili is desperate to delay his death and live out his days with his immortal wife. Fili, disabled from his fall on Ravenhill, will do anything it takes to walk again and be the strong prince and heir that Erebor deserves. Against the judgement of their allies, they take the rings. Allegiances are pushed to breaking point, families turn on one another, and the enduring will of dwarves is tested further than ever before as darkness threatens to destroy Erebor both inside and out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ahahahaha
> 
> why am i even doing this to myself, i don't know. Apparently I don't have enough on my plate right now so HERE WE GO MORE ANGST yes, good. 
> 
> But really, this idea sort of occurred to me a while back - what would have happened to Erebor if Thorin/Fili/Kili had lived? Would Thorin be the sort of leader that Dain was, with so much more behind him? How would the allegiance between Thorin and Thranduil work, going forward? But the biggest question was, if offered, would Thorin have taken the rings offered by Sauron's servants? I mean, three rings, three Durinbabes... the parallel was too good to pass up. And all the Extended Edition hype going around really reinvigorated me and i just couldnt help myself. So here we are. 
> 
> Updates (until Frailty is finished, at least, so forever HAR HAR) will be kind of sporadic, but I promise it won't be abandoned. And I'm not intending to follow the LOTR storyline in any depth (not much point, really), although the plot of this will run parallel to it.

_The eagles are coming._

Thorin stands at the edge of the frozen waterfall and watches, the sword slipping through his fingers and clattering on the ice. He watches, breath shallow, as they decimate the orcs that wounded them so terribly, that took his nephew from him, that killed his father and grandfather, with half-a-dozen guileless swoops in the air. The sunlight catches their tawny feathers and gleams liquid fire, and for a moment he’s reminded of dragon flame.

Thorin shivers. He’s cold from the icy water, from the chill in the wind that cuts through his mail sharper than any orcish blade, through his skin and into his bones. His heart is frozen. Bilbo is weeping behind him, standing a little apart from Azog’s corpse, with the sniffling sighs of a rebuked child. Thorin knows why. He can still see it preserved in his mind’s eye — Fili small as a child in Azog’s grip, the deep beating of the drum, a low, single cry of pain. _Run._

When he’s sure the battle is won, Thorin turns away. He’s hollow in this victory, shrivelled and deflated as a carcass left to wither in the mountains. A small voice cries out inside of him — _Kili_. He doesn’t know if Kili was alive or with his brother. That’s the spark in him that drives back the lethargy, and with his eyes swimming, Thorin stumbles across the ice as best he can, weaponless, dripping blood from the wound in his shoulder. Bilbo’s following, gasping something that’s lost in the chilly winter wind. He’s a distant thought in Thorin’s mind. He has an image in his mind of Kili lying crumpled on his side with flies flitting about on his lifeless face and it spurs him on faster, a ragged shout tearing from his throat. _Kili_. The terror increases as he remembers all the orcs crowding about in that tower, mocking him, jeering at him. They’d tear Kili to pieces. So small. He’s panting with exertion, and his shoulder is throbbing. So fragile. Underneath that armour, they’re all so brittle.

* * *

At first, Fili thinks he’s dead.

He should be dead — nobody, nothing, can survive a fall like that. He remembers the desperate thud in his chest, one, two, three, four, five, before he hit the ground and everything when black and red and the horrific crunch of every bone in his body breaking. He remembers hearing Kili screaming, the scrape of boots on snow, the distant roar of orcs. He remembers the familiar screech of eagles far above him. But he lies in the snow and rock and he can’t hear anything now, can’t see anything, can’t feel anything, can’t _move_ anything either. He can’t even lift his fingers or turn his head. But there’s blood coming out of his mouth, and dead people can’t bleed, and his broken ribs creak and pop with every desperate gasp of air and reminds him that dead people don’t breathe either.

So he’s still alive. Impossibly, miraculously, he’s still alive.

* * *

The screech of the eagles is lost on Kili. So too is the roar of the orc, the distant bellow of his uncle. The drumbeat of his heart muffles the outside world, and Kili gives in to the raw savagery of grief. If he can hear a voice in his ears, it’s not real, not anymore. It’s the whisper of a ghost. _Run._ Bolg is faster, stronger, maybe even smarter than Kili, but he’s outmatched. Even the son of Azog the Defiler can’t equal his violent bloodlust. He takes the orc apart like a warg would a helpless fawn, using his sword until the blade breaks between the metal plating of Bolg’s ribs. Then he uses his knife, until the thrashing against him fades to the involuntary twitch of the dying.

Kili sinks to his knees, watching the oil slick of orcish blood spread across the boot-tramped snow as the fire fades within him. He can hear it clearer now, ringing in his ears as clear as a bell — _run, run, run._ The reality of Fili’s death is yet to fully penetrate. It leaves his head cloudy and distant and uncomprehending, but at the same time, it’s as though his heart has been carved out and served on a platter for Azog, and he’s bleeding, fatally. He can really feel it. His head sinks into his hands and Kili screams. It’s a low roar, deep from the gut, and it makes his lungs ache.

The breath mists as Kili finally lifts his head. The wind cuts against the wetness on his face, so cold that it seems to burn. Flurries of snow settle in his hair and melt against his cheeks, and every breath inwards is a stab of pain deep in his chest. The rushing fades in his ears, slowly, leaving Kili in a preserved almost-silence, with only the howling of the wind to accompany him. Otherwise, he’s alone, gathering snow, taking root in the jagged slabs of rock.

 _Move._ There’s a voice in his mind’s ear. _Get up_. With the last of his strength, Kili finally pitches forward and heaves himself to his feet. He’s not injured, but Kili walks with the unsteady shuffle of the gravely wounded, clutching at his broken heart, dragging his half-sword behind him.

At the bottom of the tower, Kili finds his brother where Azog had so carelessly tossed him, limbs askew. So still. So silent. The hilt slips through his fingers and Kili staggers the last few steps to Fili’s body. “Oh—” On his knees, Kili curls inward like a pup, his head on Fili’s shoulder, one arm draped across his chest. His heart thuds in his ears and Kili lets the sobs well up and break within him, coming out through his purpling lips in soft whines and gasps.

And just as Kili’s hope grows lowest, he feels a shuddering gasp of air beneath his palm.

* * *

Thranduil is not merciful.

Mercy is a weakness, a vice. It takes away power and advantage. Pity is an alien emotion to him, and he will only bestow kindness when it is earned, when he’s aware of the cost. Legolas has called him heartless on occasion; he’ll learn, in time. Thranduil is convinced. Perhaps today will teach him that.

Because it’s such a terrible price that has been paid. The dead number in their hundreds and Thranduil walks up and down, counting the cost. He assumes order from the chaos, directing the wounded and dying, those who can be saved and those who are doomed. He saves his own and directs others to the men and women of Esgaroth clinging to their pale, mortal lives. He doesn’t even think about the dwarves until one of his servants approaches him, wringing his bloodstained hands and saying that Thorin Oakenshield has emerged from Ravenhill bearing the half-dead body of his nephew.

He doesn’t ask for help, yet Thranduil still offers it. It’s not an act of kindness. He sees an opportunity for trade. It’s a short walk to the makeshift dwarven camp, little more than canvas shelters for the worst wounded, a few quick fires. One of Dain’s bloodstained brutes directs him to the largest tent in the middle, eyes downcast. Thranduil has to bow his head to enter and inside he remains hunched, squinting a little in the gloom.

It’s a truly pitiful sight. There are perhaps half-a-dozen of Erebor’s squatters keeping up a silent vigil over a low, crude pallet. The blonde dwarf is stretched out on it, utterly still, eyes closed. Thorin kneels beside him, holding one hand between his own, the knuckles pressed to his mouth. The dark-haired one — the brother, the one who took Tauriel away from him — sits with his body draped half-over the pallet, head resting against a pillow of bloodstained golden curls. His sobs are the only sound in the tent, the heaving of his shoulders the only movement. It’s a rare, private moment of grief from a people famed for their stoicism and pride, but it doesn’t stir any pity in Thranduil’s heart. The line of Durin are simply paying their dues.

His presence stokes a fire in the little tent, and the air is immediately hostile. The axe-bearing dwarf with the shining, tattooed head steps forward, places himself between Thranduil and the dying nephew, hands grasping for a weapon he has long since cast aside. Thorin remains on his knees, frosty, with one hand on the young dwarf’s trembling shoulder, shaking him, encouraging him to be silent.

“What do you—” Thorin tries to be cool and imperious, but his voice breaks and he has to stop for air. “What do you want, Thranduil.”

It’s not mercy; it’s half of a business transaction. It’s the binding of an oath. It’s control. Towering over the dwarves like a spider in a web of caught flies, Thranduil holds out one hand. “I can save him,” He said simply. The young dwarf, the thief, gasps. “for a price.”

Thorin’s hard stare is diminished when his eyes are red from weeping, but he gives it his best attempt. “Out, all of you.” At least now he’s in control of his voice. “Dwalin, take Kili.”

“Uncle,” Kili jerks at Thorin’s voice. “Please— whatever he wants. _Please_.”

“Come on, lad.” The others all shuffle out quietly, not looking at Thranduil, but Kili struggles. The bald dwarf, Dwalin (he supposes he shall have to learn their names now), takes his arms and pins them to his sides.

“I-I don’t care what he wants! Just do it!” Thranduil stares coolly as Kili begs his uncle, breaking free and stretching out to touch his brother one last time. “Thorin, you can’t let him die!” Tears don’t suit him; with his brooding gaze and dark features, it makes Kili look sullen and sulky. _“Please!”_

Thorin closes his eyes as Kili leaves, breathing slowly, in and out, in an obvious attempt to maintain control of himself. He’s still holding the blonde’s hand. “What is it you want?” He finally speaks. “What do I have to do to save Fili’s life?”

Thranduil takes a step towards the pallet, and another until he is close enough to touch the dwarf. He rests his hands on Fili's chest and studies the stilted in and out, feeling the throb of his heart, the tide-pull of energy as his body bullishly refuses to give in. Dwarves are hardier creatures than most; a man would have died long before now, and an elf would at this point be begging for release to the Undying Lands. His mind is active — foggily, Fili can hear all of this. He looks up at Thranduil through cracked eyelids and keeps on breathing.

Thranduil pulls down the blanket. There's no bandages — dwarves don't have a hope of healing this — and he can see the black swelling of ruptured organs beneath the skin, his crushed ribs and punctured lung. Thorin visibly flinches.

“His spine is broken.” Thranduil reports coolly, as though discussing trade tariffs or a law dispute. “Did he fall on his back?” Thorin nods, looking sick. “He's completely crippled, Thorin. I can't undo that. You may as well ask me to regrow a limb.”

Fili's eyelids flicker. Thorin stares down at his nephew's face, still holding Fili's hand, even though he can't feel it. “What do you want from me,” he repeats, devastated but determined. He really will do anything to save this sad little creature, even if it cost him his very throne. Thorin loves his nephew deeper than any gold or treasure now that his life hangs precariously in the balance.

“Hand over the share of the treasure you owe to the people of Esgaroth. Apologise to them formally.” A smile twitches in the corner of his mouth as he dispels any foolish pretensions of kindness and mercy. Thorin stares with an unbridled hatred, and Thranduil knows there will never be friendship between them. He’s not particularly concerned.  “And I keep the Arkenstone.”

It's a cruel, deliberate blow, and it wounds Thorin. It’s the very cause of this battle, or at least the beginning of it, that stone, but Thranduil knows Thorin would give it up in a heartbeat for his nephew’s life. He sees the helplessness in Thorin’s eyes, a self-envisaged failed guardian. He sees the binding paternal love that transcends any notion of pride and honour. The sagging pouches beneath his cheeks deepen in a sharp intake of air, and he briefly closes his eyes. “Do it.” Fili's breath audibly hitches. “Whatever state he’s in, he's worth ten Arkenstones. Do whatever it takes to save him.”

* * *

It’s Legolas who finds her, Legolas who carries her down the mountain until she insists she can walk, Legolas who coaxes her sit down and rest, never leaving her side. When Galion insists she’s not welcome in their camp, it’s Legolas who declares that either both of them stay or none of them do. Banishment is such a remote concept for him. He’ll never be graceless. Tauriel realises the danger as she sips at a watery, diluted wine pushed into her hand. He'll risk everything for her, but she doesn’t want him. She wants someone else, someone she isn’t sure is still alive.

“Tauriel!” It’s Tilda who finds her, peaky face shining in the buttery light, clinging to a shawl tossed haphazardly over her shoulders. Standing over her, Legolas crosses her arms and frowns. Her tiny arms strain in a hug and Tauriel feels a tightness in her chest, like an iron fist gripped around her heart, squeezing it. Sigrid follows, white-faced, dishevelled, and Tauriel immediately senses that something’s very wrong.

“Where’s your father?” She asks. “And Bain? Are they…”

“They’re fine.” But Sigrid won’t sit down. She shifts from foot to foot, staring over the edge of the camp towards a distant cluster of tents. “It’s Fili.” Her voice, blunt and hollow, cracks. “I heard— it’s not good, Tauriel.” She grabs handfuls of her apron, hiding her fingers in the fabric so Legolas won’t see the shaking. “He won’t make it.”

“Oh.” Tauriel understands that agony, the pull towards the impossible. She feels it too. Even though she's aching at the thought of poor Fili, she has to ask. “Wh-What about the others?” Legolas tenses and pangs of contrition pull in her gut as she reveals her infidelity.

“With him.” Sigrid rasps. “I— Tilda, come.” She holds a shaking hand out. “I have to find Da. I…”

“Go.” Tauriel murmurs. She drains the wine and watches them leave, feeling her heart swell and throb as the crushing pressure is relieved. He's alive. She clings to that hope. It's a shield from the the shadow of uncertainty that hangs over her.

“Tauriel, no.” When she stands up, Legolas senses can sense what she’s going to do. “Please.” He clings to her elbow, begs her, pleads with her. “We can leave, both of us. Forget about my father, about Mirkwood. We don’t need any of it.” His voice is low, like a lover’s, humming with desperate passion, but it’s not working. It never did.

“Stay here.” She pushes the empty cup into his hands. “Wait for your father.” Legolas shakes his head. “I can’t take you from him, Legolas.” Tauriel whispers. “He’ll never forgive me. I'll never forgive myself.”

It's a long, cold, lonely walk. Tauriel senses the hostility on both sides as she crosses the barren dirt. All she can see is the pain in Legolas’ eyes as he accepts his brutal defeat. Kili or not, she had tried to tell him, it was impossible. It always was. But it was only the appearance of another champion that sealed Legolas’ defeat. Her own feelings, she muses as she walks, were never relevant.

With her hands at her sides, standing at a distance, invisible, Tauriel watches him. Kili heaves and lunges in the arms of two dwarves, driven mad with his wild grief. His mouth is open and shapeless, and she imagines the sound of it with a shiver. Thranduil steps out, and Tauriel holds her breath. She watches as he looks askance at Kili and walks aside without further acknowledgement. He notices her, freezing in his walk before continuing with renewed purpose. With a haughty scoff, he brushes past her, and she hears clack of boots on rock fall silent.

“If you have an ounce of grace, Tauriel,” she feels sick at the voice, “you'll leave him alone and depart from this part of the world.”

“Is Fili dead?” Tauriel aches for him, watching as Thorin approaches Kili, sinks to his knees and bends low to speak in his ear. Kili struggles against him at first, a flash of a pale face through the shock of dark hair and mail, before he crumbles.

“It would be better if he was.” The staccato beat of Thranduil’s boots grow distant and vanish, and Tauriel knows he will never speak to her again. She's completely deserving of that.

“But I can't leave him.” She whispers, words lost to the wind. With the dust swirling at her feet, shivering in the cold, Tauriel watches from a distance, an uncertain intruder with nowhere else to go.

* * *

Thorin’s hands are on his shoulders, squeezing them, thumb digging into the hollow beneath his collarbone. It’s a sudden, sharp pain, enough for Kili to hold his breath long enough to listen, for his half-hearted fists against his uncle’s side to fall still.

“He’s alive.” Low and urgent, the words tumble out. “He’s not going to die, Kili. Thranduil gave his word. Not today, not now. He saved him.” With a moan, Kili gives in to the relief, collapsing into Thorin’s arms. “He— He won’t ever recover,” Thorin warns him, arms locked in a tight embrace. A broken link in his uncle’s mail is digging painfully into Kili’s cheek, but he pays it no attention. “Kili, you have to understand this. His back… It’s too broken for anyone to fix, even Thranduil. He can’t— He won’t be able to move.”

“What do you mean?” Kili pulls back. “Won’t move what?”

“Anything.” Thorin chokes on the awful news, desperately fighting back as the grief attacks him. “He’ll be… bedridden, frozen, for the rest of his life.” Silently, Kili absorbs the news and feels the cold horror swell in his chest, filling him up to the very tips of his fingers, and against his will, his whole body starts to shake.

“No.” Kili hears the shocked, saddened murmurs around him in a bubbling chorus. He can’t make anything out. “ _No._ ” It’s impossible to imagine, harder even than the idea of Fili’s death — his brother, his brave, indomitable brother, reduced to a bedridden invalid, fed and dressed and cleaned like an infant until the end of his days. A rushing panic cuts through that horror and Kili backs away from Thorin on his hands and knees.

Why does he run? It’s so senseless and desperate. But he he flees as though he can somehow escape from this. He makes it past the tents, listening to the thud of heavy boots behind him, and runs for the jagged foothills, away from Erebor, from the elves camped out on their doorstep, away from the bloody remnants of the battle. It’s hard to breathe and there’s a painful stitch in his side, but Kili keeps running until it’s more of a stumbling climb downwards, loose rocks clattering around his feet. Kili misjudges a handhold, and with a lurch in his chest, it gives way, sending him skidding down the side of a stony hill where he crumples at the bottom, his palms raw and bleeding.

It’s almost sunset. Kili stares at the scrubby wasteland below, still charred from Smaug’s breath, the lake gleaming in the corner of his eye. He’s sheltered at the bottom of the slope, and the wind howls overhead in ghostly mourning. Shame grows as he reflects on his flight, leaning against a broad rock, cool against his cheek and pockmarked from countless storms. It’s a painful reminder of how badly he needs Fili. He’s not ready for this. He’s not ready to be the big brother, the protector, the leader. He’s not ready to take over.

“Kili?” His stomach softens at the voice. It’s clear as a bellbird through the wind. Tauriel. He wipes at his face and finds his feet, trying to assume a look of stoic contemplation. She emerges at the top of the slope and finds a way down, light and sure-footed as a goat. Wordlessly, she holds her arms out at the bottom but he turns away from her, fists at his side, chest heaving in and out. “Kili, I’m so sorry.” Tauriel goes on. “If there’s anything I can do to help you...”

Kili takes a step backwards and bumps into the boulder. He looks down, sees the dark specks from where he had rested his face, and covers it with his hand. Just a few hours before, Kili had stood before his uncle and in a flush of bravado called him a coward. How could things change so quickly? It’s a cruel punishment for his naivety, for thinking that he and his brother were somehow untouchable. Nothing lasts. With that realisation resting on his soul, Kili looks over to her, heart thudding in his throat. Tauriel’s wounded — there’s a sticky trail of blood down the side of her face, and she’s holding herself carefully, like nursing a cracked piece of fine porcelain.

“Marry me.” Defiant, Kili stands with his head held high. Tauriel’s eyes widen, and she reels back from him, a hand over her mouth. “Stay. Be here, in Erebor, with me.” There’s no gem or trinket that he has to give to her, no token to seal the vow. “Be my wife.”

 _Wife_. It’s such an alien concept, especially from him. Tauriel’s head spins. It’s exploitative; Kili’s not himself, and it’s so painfully obvious. It’s an act of desperation, not of love, and Tauriel knows Kili will regret it within a week, a day, an hour. Not only that, it’s a death sentence to her, binding her endless life to his mortal one, brief as a flash in the passing of the centuries. She’ll be too far gone. But she’s walking towards him, compelled, one hand stretched out. She’s already too far gone, Tauriel rationalises to herself. And she sinks to her knees before him, so they can look each other in the eye.

Despite the heaviness of the grief on Kili’s shoulders, there’s a trilling, a rush in his chest as they kiss. He tastes sunshine, rain, the freshness of a summer breeze. He can’t forget, he’ll never forget, but for a moment, it seems to hurt a little less. He kisses her again, feeling the hitch of her ribs as their bodies met, one of her slim, elegant hands resting on the small of his back. She’s as light as a bird against him, and he feels stout and clumsy by comparison.

An eagle screeches above them. Kili shivers at the sound and presses his face against Tauriel’s neck, trying to lose himself in her for as long as he possibly can until his uncle comes to find him. The reality of what he’s done, what he’s promised, in the face of all that has happened, threatens to drown him. He holds on to Tauriel, keeping himself afloat in her arms, as the sun farewells the day.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Even on her knees, she is very nearly taller than him. Tauriel keeps her head bent to try and mitigate this, whole body bowed in her humility as the dwarves discuss her fate, mostly cool and detached, one without a shred of empathy. “She saved my life.” Kili's voice trembles and the quavering gets right into her heart, a shard of glass that cuts and draws blood. “I'm the reason Thranduil banished her, uncle. Oin, tell him – there's nothing you could do to stop the poison. I was dying.”

“I couldn’t help him.” Oin admits, dry as dust. “That black magic was beyond my skill – beyond the skill of any dwarves. She saved his life.”

Tauriel’s eyes flicker upwards and catch Thorin’s face for a moment, the shock setting his face in deep, gloomy lines. “Why am I only hearing of this now?”

“I told you!” Kili steps forward, close enough for Tauriel to hear him breathe, to see the toes of his boots in her periphery. “The day we came back, I tried to tell you, b-but you wouldn't listen to us. All you cared about was your stupid gold. You didn't even–”

“Hold your tongue, lad.” Tauriel’s hands clench into fists at the deep rumbling to her left. “You're not helping her.”

“If you throw her out, you're no better than them!” Kili ignores him. “Have we learned nothing from all of this?”

Thorin clears his throat, and the tent falls silent. Tauriel holds her breath, awaiting the verdict with her heart thumping in her chest. “She has done a service to my family.” There's a falseness in his voice. Tauriel doesn't believe him. “and I will offer appropriate monetary compensation–”

“She doesn't need gold, Thorin! She needs a _home.”_ She can resist looking up now. Kili's broad little hands are curled into fists at his side, dark doe-eyes flashing in a rare anger. “And we owe it to her to provide that.”

“The captain of Thranduil’s guard, sleeping in my halls?” Thorin snaps. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Kili? And to suggest this now, of all days–”

“Oh _, damn_ you!” Kili stamps his foot. Thorin’s taken aback; they all are. He stares, wide-eyed with his mouth open. Even Kili is reeling at his outburst, one hand pressed against his lips as his gaze lowers to the ground.

And in that tense, shocked silence, they all hear the rattling of inward breath. “Thorin,” it’s a strained whisper, the first he’s spoken since they carried his body down from the mountain. They all turn to look at the motionless lump of a body in the makeshift bed, a pair of exhausted blue eyes in a pale face, almost too tired to draw air. Fili reminds her of a bird trying to fly with broken wings, its delicate bones crushed beneath the heavy paw of some vicious predator. “Thorin, let her stay.”

Who could argue with that?

* * *

Not even a day has passed, and yet Fili feels as though it’s been a lifetime since Azog’s blade pierced him and he fell. He’s exhausted. There’s no pain, no possibility of feeling it. Already, dwarves have traipsed in and out of his tent, sitting at the creaky old stool at his head and holding his hand (not that it does Fili any good), asking in soft tones how he was doing, that it was good to see him awake, if there was anything they could do, their eyes wet in their pity and mouths forced into uneasy smiles. He wishes they were stop. Pity won’t save him. It’s futile, and Fili feels himself grow cold and angry against that futility. Even Thorin, he can tell, pities him, his breath shaking as they touch foreheads, blinking rapidly and looking away when Fili shakily says he was fine. It taints the grief and sorrow that was heaped over him by the dozen, and wears him out. Only Kili refuses to pity him. He’s too guilty and self-absorbed for it, re-enacting the ugly scene in his mind as he stares into Fili’s face, silently cursing himself for letting his brother go on alone.

The night falls, and with it an ugly reminder of how much Fili needs others just to survive. In complete privacy, waiting until the rest of the camp is asleep, or as close as they will get, Kili has to change and clean him. Fili keeps his eyes closed, not wanting to look, listening to Kili’s voice and concentrating on what he can feel. An itch in his beard. The tickle of a strand of hair on his cheek. The coolness of night air against his damp forehead. They’re tiny, treasured sensations and he clings to them. It’s a reminder he’s still alive. Kili’s breath starts, and the humiliation unfurls inside of him. He hears the dripping of water as Kili wrings a cloth out over a bowl, and soon the stinging builds in his eyes. It’s this cruel, devastating moment when the reality of everything hits Fili, of how far gone he is. It cuts through the exhaustion, the deadness. His heart races, pounding in his ears as the panic takes hold, the realisation that every day someone, Kili or some poor servant, will have to do this. Every day, a little more of Fili’s pride would erode in his complete dependency of others. Every damn day until the end of his miserable, useless life.

“Hey,” Kili whispers when he realises his brother is crying. “It’s all right, Fili. It’s not your fault–”

“Just get it over with.” He sniffs and withers in shame at the sound. He counts the throbbing beats of his heart, ten, twenty, then fifty, and Kili is still shuffling cloth and wringing out water, going away and coming back again. Once more, Fili is exhausted. The sweat is damp in his hair from the rush of panic and he keeps his eyes closed, waiting for Kili to come back. Finally, the stool creaks.

“There.” He gently touches Fili’s forehead, where he knows he can feel it. Fili opens his eyes. “It’s _fine._ We all forgot about that. I’ve– I’ve sorted it. Anyway, I don’t care at all.” But Kili does. His eyes are all red and when he finally stops speaking, his lower lip trembles.

“You don’t have to.” Fili whispers. “Find someone. Pay them. Even–”

“No.” Kili won’t hear a word of it. “I'm not running away again. I'm going to take care of you, all right? I know you’d do all of this for me without a second thought. Wouldn’t you?” Fili can only blink. “You always looked out for me, Fili. And you’re still doing it.” He leans in so he can whisper, his breath shifting the loose hair on Fili's face, resting his chin on his palm. “We’ll get through this. We’re still together.”

Together, but not equal. FIli closes his eyes, feeling so tired. Somehow, just lying here is exhausting, and the effort of those few words has drained him. “You’ve got to look after the both of us now.” But he doesn’t understand. He’ll never understand. Not Kili, who has shirked responsibility in every form throughout his short life. He’s never had to sacrifice anything, either for his family or his people. He’s never needed to. “Everything – everyone – else has to be put aside.” He won’t say her name, but Kili knows exactly who he’s talking about. “You can’t love her. Not now.” In the shadows, the lines deepen on his face, and Kili looks violent. Fili’s reminded with another cold chill how much blood his brother spilt today in his unconquerable rage. “It’s all down to you. It’s your duty to carry on our line. Surely, Kili, you must realise that.”

Kili closes his eyes and swallows hard, his throat bobbing visibly as he presses the back of his hand over his mouth. For a moment, it seems as though he will break, but somehow he forces back the screams and sobs that must have been cutting down his soul. “I know.” He finally chokes out. “I-I know.”

* * *

For a handsome sum, cartloads of elvish goods groan and creak through Erebor’s broken gates. It's all silks of green and brown and silver; Thorin fingers the fabric and scowls, but there are no spinners to harvest and weave the flax, no sheep or goats to shear naked. Erebor is still very much incomplete.

One of the first pieces to arrive is Fili's massive feather mattress. He doesn't want or need it, he tells his uncle that, but Thorin doesn't listen. The very best bedchamber, the one Thror once held, is scrubbed clean of soot and the twisted, scorched remains of furniture removed, an iron bedstead, cleaned and stripped of rust, taking pride of place, facing the door. Like a doll, Fili is set upon the bed in a silken night shirt with a mithril circlet on his head, the blankets tucked in around his waist, hands folded in his lap, propped up by a dozen silken pillows and a special wooden back-rest.

And then they seem to forget about him.

Thorin comes once a day, in the night, while the rest are still eating and drinking downstairs. It's not long – just a few strained, stilted lines of conversation before he can't fight the tremor in his voice anymore. His grief, rooted in his guilt and pity, saps Fili of what little strength he has left. He's glad, most days, that these visits are so brief.

Dwalin comes to see him every few days, and Bofur visits once, but it's Bilbo and Ori who spend their time with him now, taking turns to sit at his bedside. Sometimes they fish out a sock or undershirt and try to darn it, or a manuscript of poetry or history that survived the fire, occasionally talking but often silent, with only the steady flicker of the flames to keep the room alive. Fili's too tired to talk and often longs for better company. He wants his brother. But there's gates and walls to repair, beasts to hunt, dead to bury, homes to rebuild, treasure to count. Time with Fili is wasted on strong hands. He eats little and sleeps for hours during the day, once waking to find the room otherwise empty.

That's when the panic set in, when Fili feels so helpless in his paralysis that he can barely breathe, weakly croaking for someone to come in and save him from the imaginary dangers – a lone coal rolling free from the fireplace and setting the rug alight, a pillow smothering him, a fall from the bed knocking him senseless. After what seems an age, Ori dashes in, bursting with apologies while Fili sobs and sobs.

Life is meaningless, but he doesn't want to die. It's an excruciating paradox.

But Kili still comes at night, every night, after Thorin has left, exhausted, suffering under the burden of his new-found heirdom, pulling his new braids out of his hair and throwing his circlet and rings and necklaces on the single table in the still-sparse chamber, laying aside his princely clothes and crawling across the enormous bed in his drab underthings. They whisper to each other, after Kili has burrowed under the covers and blown out the candles, insisting on sleeping right next to Fili even though the bed is so massive, a small island of skin and hair in a sea of elvish silk. He can't feel the press of Kili against his side or the arm slung over his chest, but the sound of his breathing is soothing enough to lull him to sleep, deep and restful and without dreams.

* * *

Daily life takes on a sort of unfeeling dullness. Kili feels as though he’s being held underwater, unable to breathe, unable to scream, as light and shadow plays before him in a low, fractured hum. He’s choking, weighed down by the gold on his hands and his head, darkness growing as he sinks to the bottom, stretching up towards a light he can never touch. Part of Kili feels paralysed too, a twin of his brother, and his hands are heavy and clumsy at his work, with none of his usual deft surety. He breaks and drops things and Thorin frowns at him, giving a shake of his head that in the past would have made Kili wither with shame. But now, he feels nothing.

“Kili,” now, Thorin holds his shoulders, studying him in the half-light of a winter’s morning. “Kili, look at me. Say something.” But there’s a disconnect. What is there to say? Kili turns away from him, the pale shape of Thorin’s face ringed in black wavering in the edge of his vision, insignificant, without a purpose. Over his shoulder, in the open mouth of the broken gate, he can see the distant spire of Ravenhill, jagged and lonely.

“Rest.” Thorin squeezes his arm. “Go and see your brother.”

He should, but he doesn’t. Kili walks with no sense of direction, with the halting stumble of someone in a dream. The mountain air swells in his lungs, too hot, too stuffy, and every breath is too tight, leaving his hands stinging, the blood struggling to pulse through his veins. This poison of lethargy is taking over his body, robbing him off his senses one by one and leaving him to struggle alone in the dark. He feels like he’s drying out in here, like the unlucky bodies he’s stumbled across, skin as thin as paper, withered, stretched over ash-grey bones, an empty ribcage where the heart has long since rotted away.

With a start, Kili opens his eyes, breaking through the surface of the mire. He’s standing in the throne room. It’s quiet in here, quiet as the catacombs, with a dusty stillness, long untouched. The only sound in the room is the rasp of his lungs rejecting the dead air. A finger of light breaks through the clouds outside and filters through the slit windows set high into the wall, illuminating the broken throne. The black shadows make harsh, bold lines against the white of the winter’s sun, and fills up his vision, searing his brain. Hatred rushes in his chest, pushing that viscous blood through his limbs. In that clear, agonising burst of hatred and rage and pain, Kili finally comes to life. There’s no dull, fading shapes of inarticulate colour; clear as though painted in ink on marble is the throne, his future, the birthright he’s robbed from his crippled brother.

Every drop of blood, every nerve in his body, every fragment of bone is given over to a boiling wave of hate. Kili wants to rush at the stone and dash it to pieces. He wants to tear it from the base and send it tumbling over the edge of that impossible chasm into the blackness below. He wants to crush it into dust and let the wind carry it away like it did the ashes of his people. But it remains there – the throne, Durin’s throne, Kili’s throne – slashed by Smaug’s claws and scorched by his breath but not broken, not yet.

* * *

Somehow, twelve days pass. Fili only knows this because of a comment Ori made about the daytime moon when he approached one afternoon, which the night before the battle had been full. At first, Fili assumes a haughty, tired air around Ori, still a dwarrow in all sense of the word, a bastard boy who had only come along on an ill-sought thirst for adventure. But, slowly, they open up to one another, a friendship of necessity where before there was only a polite, passing acquaintance. There’s a watchfulness about Ori that Fili grows to find comforting.

After Ori fed and washed and changed him several times, Kili too tied up in the goings-on of Erebor to come up the dozen flights of stairs that led to Fili’s room, Fili finds his guard, his sense of self-propriety around Ori, diminished. And Ori, in return, warms to Fili, sitting at his bedside with a sense of devotion rather than the duty that wasn’t there before. It’s an arrangement that suits them both. And Fili needs something in his life to combat the misery. The panic has faded and in its place is the cold deadness of resignation, knowing that while Erebor is slowly restored to her former glory, hope gleaming in the eyes of his people at the mention of her name, Fili is trapped in this bed, in his broken body, holding court in an empty room for ever. There’s no rebuild or repair for his crushed bones. Just carrying on.

In the afternoon, Fili wakes from a long sleep to see Ori darning a sock. “Someone’s asked to see you.” He said gently. “I tried to wake you, but you were really out to it.”

“Who?” Fili stares up at the ceiling, wondering if he could get something painted on it. Maybe some sort of puzzle or visual game that he can only solve with his eyes. Mahal, he needs something to look at. Perhaps he’ll go mad in here, shut off from the rest of the world.

“Sigrid.” And even though his body is lifeless, his heart swells at the mention of her name, thumping in his chest, and Fili’s sure Ori can hear it.

“Find her. Bring her in,” he begs, voice hitching. “please.”

They’ve given her a beautiful elvish dress, one befitting a princess of green silk and gold brocade, but she wears the same ratty old shawl over her shoulders, the battered heel of her old boots scraping along the floor. “Oh–” She stands in the doorway, eyes wide in her horror, face slowly crumpling as she takes him in, lolling slackly against the pillows with his hands unmoving in his lap. Something surges in Fili’s chest against her as she gives in to that same grief and pity that he’s seen on the face of every person who looks at him, that same stifled breathing. In a hot flash, he hates her for this, irrational and passionate, the colour rising in his cheeks. He doesn’t want her.

“Don’t cry.” He spits the words out and she recoils, shaking. “Don’t come in here if you’re going to cry.”

She leaves the door open as she flees, and Fili hears the choked sob echo along the passage, soft as a whisper, lingering in his ears long after her footsteps have faded.

* * *

Tauriel returns after a week on horseback, laden with tight-rolled deerskins, the choicest cuts of meat already cooked or salted and wrapped in soft cloth, in neat, tidy bundles. It's not much, her contribution, but Thorin’s eyes nevertheless glow at the sight of it.

Watching from a distance, her slim, green body as small as his index finger, Kili feels himself come undone, the seams of his body splitting as his heart beats violently in his chest, blood rushing beyond the capacity of his veins. It all explodes in his head, and it’s agonising, a red film over his vision, and he forces himself to turn away. There’s a violent darkness in his love, in the way his body yearns to her, tempered with the agony of the forbidden, making it hard to breathe and swallow when her face flashes across his murky thoughts.

There’s no rest for him, not like this. After Fili has drifted off in the bed next to him that night, Kili stumbles in the darkness for his new furred cloak, one Thorin had packed in a chest the week before Smaug first attacked, a little musty and fragile at the edges, but otherwise still whole. It’s lined with the white-silvered fur of the wolf, the collar pale in the gloomy passage as he trails his finger along the stone wall. The midnight wind whispers in his ear, breathes against his neck. No. Don’t go. He draws the hood over his head to shut it out.

His hands stumble on the latch, trembling in his eagerness. She hasn’t locked it; why would she? Tauriel is unsuspecting of any harm. Kili staggers into the room, lit only by a single candle-flame sputtering and drowning in a stub of tallow. He sees the lithe shape of her body, the red of her hair, deep as autumn leaves withering on the branch, as poisonous holly-berries, as an open wound. The brittle cloak tears in Kili’s effort to cast it aside and her eyes open at the sound, green with immortal life.

Without a word, he climbs into the pile of blankets and skins she calls a bed. Beneath the leather and coarse, hardy linen of her travelling garb, Tauriel’s shift is thin as cheesecloth and achingly soft to the touch, Kili’s hands sliding like water over the fabric. He can feel everything, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her waist, the jut of her hips, fumbling and grasping with his clumsy dwarvish hands, artless as he tries to pull it up over her thighs.

Their mouths meet with the sickening rush of an awful fall, pounding in his head, and the wings burst forth an inch from the bottom, spiralling upwards, towards the sky, dizzying. Tauriel drags her hands through his hair, searching for the buttons on his shirt and pulling it over his head as soon as his neck is free. There’s a curious reverence in the way they touch each other, his callused hands and her silk-smooth ones, him coasting along the gentle plains of her body, her feeling the heaving muscles beneath that thick forest of hair.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, really, and neither does she. It doesn’t matter. They’re both young, in their own way, and inexperienced, with nothing else to compare this to. It feels like it’s over too quickly for Kili, and yet at the same time it seems to go on forever. It’s a rush of timelessness, of hearts beating too quickly, of skin against skin and the rasp of the deer-hide against his back, of her hair in his mouth and around his neck, a blood-coloured nose dragging him down, the edges of their bodies blurring, uncertain, fusing with no beginning or end. With a short gasp, a shudder, a crackle of ecstasy that flares through his spine and along his veins, the candle-flame drowns in the pool of liquid fat, and they both fall still, clinging to each other in the darkness, Kili slowly growing cold with the horror of what he’s done.

* * *

There is a grand feast, a celebration of the living, a commiseration of the dead. Everyone’s invited, and those in Thorin’s Company are given pride of place at the head table. Fili has heard talk of it for days. He expects to be left behind, alone, for the night, but with a low hum of surprise, Tauriel knocks on his door in the early afternoon, relieving Ori of his post.

“I don’t think I’d be welcome.” She says with a soft smile, folding her long legs beneath her. “Being a traitor. So I thought I would spend the evening here, give Bilbo and Ori a rest.”

But they start talking. At first, it’s that excruciating small talk that Fili has grown to hate – how good Fili is looking, Erebor’s sluggish progress, the weather. It’s all lies, and Fili can barely stomach them.

“But how have you been?” He asks when Tauriel pauses for breath. “Really.” The delicate, frozen smile quivers in surprise and the elf looks away from Fili, into the embers of the fire, drawing in a long, shuddering breath.

“Better.” She wrings her hands in her lap; knots of sinew and bone and porcelain-white skin. They look as fragile as bird’s-bones wrapped in silk, but he knows what she’s done with them. “I just have to… get used to things.” She flattens her hands out over the green fabric of her skirt, exhaling sharply, as though yes, that was a satisfactory answer. A flush of pity unfurls beneath Fili’s ribs, but it’s not enough to dispel that sense of unease. She’s still so dangerous.

“Kili said you’ve been outside the mountain until recently. Hunting.” Tauriel nods, and this is starting to feel like an interrogation now. He can sense the mistrust; Fili has become adept at reading facial cues, deciphering the words that people won’t dare speak. “Sometimes, he thinks you’re going to run away and never come back.”

“Oh, no.” She swallows hard, the wide curve of her mouth drooping downward. “Never.” Fili says nothing. “I could never leave him.”

Fili is unrelenting. “My brother’s childish infatuation with you,” and he hates the language he’s using. He hates being cruel. “it’s not going to continue, Tauriel.” She flinches away from him, hands remaining in her lap. She could kill him, Fili realises. She could take those bird-bone hands and squeeze his throat and there wouldn’t be a thing anyone could do to stop her. He lives in a state of constant trust and dependency. “He’s too important now.”

“I-I know.” Oh, she’s good, playing it off like sort of exasperated dame suffering from Kili’s affections, humble and cool all at the same time. Tauriel’s read the right books. She knows how to behave.

“He’s going to be king after Thorin passes.” No one has said it aloud, not to Fili, and hearing it ring in his ears for the first time brings a dull, aching throb to his heart, deflating the air from his lungs. The panic seizes his paralyzed body, wringing out what lingering feeling there is left tucked away in the corner of his mind, and he sears and sizzles white-hot for three thudding beats of his heart before it fades. “And his son a king after him.” She makes a point of not looking at him. “And I will not let either of you risk that.” There’s a flash in her eye; disobedience, subversion. “I can’t ask you to leave without cause. I know how much that will hurt Kili.” A short, shuddering breath breaks through her lips. “But there is no possibility, ever, of you loving him. And if you– if you do, I will find out. Kili can’t keep secrets from me. I always find out.” His voice is hard and fierce. It doesn’t sound like him. “Don’t make me tell Thorin. He will bar you from this land and all the kingdoms that surround it and no one will defend you.”

Those elegant hands curl into fists and a thrum of fear pangs in Fili’s chest. For a second, that wide mouth tightens and wrinkles in anger, and he is sure that she really will kill him. The silvered hilt of her knife gleams in the candlelight. She’ll kill him and take Kili away and leave this barren mountain to wither into ashes. But as soon as it comes, it fades, Tauriel closing her eyes and breathing outward, no lingering pretence of exasperation, no feigned ignorance. Just sadness. Her mouth quivers, too red in her pale face, and her eyes are wet and gleaming. “Love him from across a room or across a desert. It’s your choice.”

* * *

“I won’t cry.” His eyes snap open at the voice – sharp, self-assured and haughty – in the doorway. “So there.”

“Good.” There's something hawkish in Sigrid’s eyes, the slight pout of her mouth. “I know you're better than that.” Her fingers are pale talons, gripping the tattered wool of her mother's old shawl. She can't get the line of dirt out from under her nails. The stool is too low for her, so she sits on the edge of the bed, hunched over a little so she can look him in the eye.

He asks about Bain and Tilda and her father, and her answers at first are tense and colourless. Sigrid is fighting to control herself. It's a long time before she relaxes and spreads her long fingers out on her lap. The coverlet and her dress are in the same shade of leaf-green, the same embroidered gold thread. Except Fili's is all twisting branches and vines, while hers are of roses. She's taken root in this bed, unfurling, coming into full bloom.

“And Kili?” She stretches out to take his hand. There's no sensation, but the hum in his chest is something deeper than physical feeling. She looks at him, and it's almost like it was before, shy, curious of him, unsure of herself. Almost. “How is he bearing up?”

“I'm worried.” Fili whispers. “To be honest. He's not ready for any of this. Thorin didn't teach him like he taught me. He doesn't know anything, and he's already struggling.”

“You're not _dead,_ Fili.” She squeezes his hand; he can see the knuckles whitening. “Help him. Teach him what Thorin taught you. Tell him what to do.”

“He's not patient. He's just… so rash. And thoughtless. Part of him is already rebelling against this, I can tell. And with Tauriel around…” He sighs. “You saw them together in Lake-Town. She’s tearing Kili apart, being here, but leaving would kill him.”

“So there's no way for them…”

“Not now.” It's one thing Fili refuses to yield to. “He needs to marry one of our own. Thorin will choose. Probably a dam from the Iron Hills, to tighten relationships with Dain. And he'll need to have an army of children. It's safer that way. The crown needs that security.”

“Oh.” Sigrid stares at their entwined hands. “Poor Tauriel. She gave everything up for him.” Fili says nothing. Cautiously, her eyes flicker upwards, to Fili’s face, but he’s hard-eyed and tense-mouthed, shutting her out.

“How could anybody love a floating head?” Sigrid doesn’t need to speak; Fili knows exactly what she’s thinking, and he won’t indulge her, not for a moment. “I need a nurse, Sigrid, not a wife. I’d never take a dam prisoner and lock her up in here with me.”

* * *

That night, the brothers lie shoulder-to-shoulder in bed, staring up at the ceiling and watching it fade as the embers slowly burn out. “I love her, Fili.”

Fili swallows. “I know.”

“I wish it was me.” He admits in a whisper. “That fell. It'd be better for everyone. Don't you think? You can say yes. I won't get angry.”

“Of course I don't wish that. Don't be stupid. I wish it wasn't anybody. But wishing won't change a thing, Kili. We can't go back.” Fili squeezes his eyes shut. “Don't let those thoughts fill your head.”

“I can’t do this.” Kili's voice trembles. “I can’t be what Thorin wants me to be.”

“Yes, you can.” There's a hardness in his voice, and he hates it. “And I will help you, every step along your journey. I’ve already made most of it.” Fili blinks, straining with his eyes to see Kili in his periphery. “I will do everything I can.”

Kili sits up, drawing his knees to his chest and encircling his arms around them. His face is dark in the fading ember-light, eyes as black as tar. Fili’s afraid to look at him. There’s no masking of Kili’s guilt and anger. It flows within him and outwards, as plain a tattoo on his skin. He suffers in silence, staring into a gloomy nothingness, an empty space, envisioning something else. Terror strikes Fili’s heart; he _knows_. Kili’s already fallen.

“No,” he blinks and his skin gleams silver-yellow in two thin tracks, lost in the childish scrub of his beard. “you can’t.”


	3. Chapter 3

The passing of time brings a dullness over Erebor, as though she is still in hibernation, waiting for the spring. Thranduil leaves after a time, the Arkenstone glittering proudly on his chest, set in a ring of silver in the shape of leaves and vines entwined, holding the gem close. He does it to mock Thorin; the dwarvish gem in the elvish setting, and they part as only chilly allies, with no promise of kinship between them. A week after the elves leave, Bilbo too bids goodbye to the sleepy mountain. The Company he farewells one by one, in solitude, wringing hands and sniffing back tears. Only Thorin is dry-eyed and stone-faced, and their parting is strained and frosty, with that friendship between them little more than a distant memory.

Shadowed in the firelight, Gandalf comes to Fili, one last time. “There are others more learned than Thranduil in the healing arts.” He leans on his staff and looks so very old, eyes gleaming like two stars reflected in a gloomy crater. Kili grips his brother’s hand and stands up, the breathing shallow in his throat. “Some who have studied in lore forgotten to the rest of the world. There’s old magic left in these lands still, hidden deep from mortal eyes.”

“You can save him?” Kili’s voice cracks – he’s so brittle now, so hollowed out – and the childish sound stirs in Gandalf’s chest. He pities them both, the once-fearless dwarrows buckling under their twin burdens, under the weight of Durin. They look grey. “W-We’ll do anything, Gandalf, anything. There’s no price too great.”

“I won’t make any promises.” How can he? How can he expect the same flush of pity and compassion from a people so completely removed from this life, so utterly unconcerned with mortal affairs? “I’m only saying that I will try.”

* * *

 

Kili holds his breath and listens keenly. Fili’s in-and-out drifts thinly across the bed, where Kili has been edging inch by inch. He’s been waiting what seems like hours and hours, ears pricked like a wolf sniffing out its prey, attuned to every movement.

 _I’ll be back._ He mouths a promise to his brother, sliding one leg out and then the other, shifting his weight as gently as he possibly can. Deep inside his belly, the fire burns, relentless. Taking Tauriel for his own, claiming her, has done nothing to quell that desire; Kili needs her more now than ever. Every hour without her is torture. He would spill blood and move mountains and break the world for her, if only she would ask. Crouching on the stone, Kili grips handfuls of the quilted silken blanket, fighting to keep quiet.

“Kili,” Ice floods his veins. “don’t.” He lifts his head and watches the still body of his brother, an unmoving lump under the sheets. He couldn’t stop him. He couldn’t hold Kili down or bold the door and throw the key out the window. All Fili has are his words. “Please. End this before you go too far. Thorin will destroy the both of you the moment he finds out. He’ll send her away and lock you up so you can’t follow her.”

“I can’t.” Kili curls against the side of the bed like a child, twisting the quilt around and around his fingers as the horror fills him slowly, the sheer scale of how destroyed he is already after only one night of passion. “Fili—I have to. I _need_ her.” His voice breaks, a plaintive wail, and he tries to muffle it in the blanket. “Fuck—Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_ ” Boiling, he presses his face against the golden weave as though it can smother the rage and terror that attacks him, screaming hoarsely into pillowed silk. He’s too angry for tears; the sobs are dry, tearing in his throat until he’s raw.

Fili lies silently, watching the blank ceiling, listening to his brother scream helplessly into the blanket. His own uselessness winds around and around his heart, a black serpent, crushing into his chest. There’s no salvation for Kili. He can’t shield him from this pain, can’t guide him out of the darkness. Every meagre milestone he’s passed since he fell at Ravenhill crumbles into dust. Thereis nothing Fili could ever do to save his brother now. They remain separate, Fili prostrate on the bed, utterly still, and Kili slumped beside it, choking with the effort to breathe.

After a long time, when the heaving sobs have evened out and the trembling of his limbs have subsided, Kili crawls up and up, like a wounded animal, and retreats into the safety of the quilt, defeated, reaching out for the dead-frozen-unmoving body of his brother. It’s all he has left.

* * *

 

Thranduil is gone, taking the last remnants of her old life with him, and the little hobbit leaves a week later and Gandalf leaves too, and Tauriel is the last outsider in this dusty mountain of dwarves. She realises that for whatever purpose this is her life now, chosen in a moment of wild passion never to be undone. The elvish world is closed off to her. There’s no undying lands, no voyage across the sea. The only escape from this mountain is the cold finality of death, where she would be separated from Kili for ever.

But Kili doesn’t come to her again. She leaves the door unlocked and lies awake, night after night, listening in the darkness for the scrape of footsteps, the shallow rasp of his passionate breathing. Her body throbs, the heat bleeding out of her through the wrap of her furs and into the stone. But Tauriel hears nothing. The mountain lies dead in the darkness, and the only sound that meets her is the cracking gasp in her throat as she gives herself over to grief. He isn’t coming. He would never come again, she convinces herself, feeling the life ebb away in her heart, her hands cold against her face.

What was it she wanted? She couldn’t go back. The thought of Thranduil, of the Greenwood, is hateful to her. It’s tarnished. Tauriel regards that former life not with the glow of nostalgia but with the dim bitterness of a bad memory. All she can recall are the faults. But she doesn’t want this, this dead mountain filled with dead bodies and dead souls and dead hearts. All she sees, wherever she looks, is death and stone and blackness. There’s no refuge for her solitude in her old life or her new.

Do they notice the change in her? Can they see how her eyes have faded, how her face has gone thin and pale, how her tread grows heavier? No. Dwarves are blind to everything but the gleam of gold. Tauriel keeps her head bent over her arrows and her furs and her needle in the day, assigning simple tasks for herself, hating every one of them in her solitude. She sees Kili only from a distance, a scrap of brown flinching away from his crown. Perhaps she should vanish into the woods, living by the bow like the exiled Dúnedain do. She packs her things sometimes, a bundle small enough to be slung at her side, her weather-stained cloak over her shoulders and hair in a long braid down her back, away from her eyes. But something compels her to stay. An invisible force, a thrum of her heart, keeps her hands at her side when she stands before the closed door to her chamber. It chimes his name, thudding in her ears. _Ki-li, Ki-li, Ki-li, Ki-li._

So she returns to bed alone, staring at the ceiling as her heart beats pathetically in her dying body, and she waits.

* * *

 

There’s a new job that comes with the turn of winter, as the chill in the wind loses some of its teeth and the frost softens. Habitation. Balin copies maps onto scraps of vellum and they descend in pairs down into the shell of the dead city. Street by street, house by house, room by room, they check every dwelling and note the condition, how many each home will fit, whether it’s built for nobles or commons.

After the first day, his feet hurting and head thick with boredom, Kili approaches Thorin in mid-conversation with Balin. “Why are we doing this?” He asks rudely, thoughtlessly, in front of almost the entire company. “We know how many people live in Ered Luin. They’d all fit in the villas near the palace, easy. Why do we have to survey the poky little shacks by the mines?”

“Well,” Thorin’s caught off-guard, embarrassed by his nephew’s naivety. Balin clears his throat and looks away. “they can’t all live there—”

“Why not?” They’re all looking away now, busying themselves, trying not to look at them. Only Nori stands with his arms crossed, watching Kili intently. “Would you rather they stood empty?”

“Those villas were built for certain people.” Stiffly, delicately, Thorin tries to head Kili off. “There would certainly be some discontent if we—”

“You’re not.” Kili’s frown deepens. “You would rather let the townhouses stand empty while peasants shivered in the damp? Why are you being so cruel? They have as much right to comfort as anybody else.”

“That’s not the way things work, Kili.” Thorin hardens against him. Kili doesn’t care about the peasants; this is just another skirmish, a day of combat in the hard-fought war between them. He just wants to make a fuss. “The nobles will live in the villas and the commoners in housing by the mines.”

“Says who?”

“Says me!” For a flash, he loses control, and Kili draws back, wide-eyed, realising he’s gone too far. Thorin snatches the papers from Kili’s hands, scowling at his unclean writing, the dashed-off diagrams and lopsided notes. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” But Kili glares at his cruel, unjust uncle, and Thorin knows the battle is far from won.

* * *

 

“Turn,” Fili rasps, breaking the stillness of the room. Sigrid stirs and blinks, half asleep, dutifully licking her finger and turning the page of the manuscript. Vellum scrapes and the spine creaks on the wooden book-rest that Bofur had made, the pages untouched after a century of imprisonment. It’s horribly boring – some devotional treatise on Mahal – and written in High Khuzdul, with long-winded sentences and complex phrasing and obscure old words which Fili has to read three times to comprehend. There’s so little that survived; the books were the first to burn, catching fire from the merest spark drifting on the breeze. Fili has a collection of about fifty in his room, including numerous duplicates, waiting for him on a shelf by his bed.

Perhaps this is the life he could lead now – the scholar and intellectual, a dwarf of letters, composing poems and treatises, histories, lore, blustering morality pieces and high-minded philosophical conversations and comedy and drama and tragedy for the stage, all from his bed. He’d like to write a tragedy, dictate the words to some young scribe. Something where the hero dies at the end, his quest unfulfilled. Perhaps he’d translate some of this bullshit Khuzdul into something that actually made sense. Fili was always clever, but he had seen the pursuit of the mind something more suited to the likes of Ori. His legacy would be forged on the battlefield and tempered on the throne, he’d thought.

He’d read the basics – the lore of Mahal, the history of Durin, Gror’s treatise on the divine right of Kings. All dwarvish. Everything here was dwarvish. Perhaps when the trade routes opened up again, he could get books brought in from all over the world. Perhaps Ori could even teach him Elvish, and he could read that too. Ink and paper would be his wide horizons. It’s so meaningless and pathetic compared to his old life, but what choice does he have? The outrage has dulled overtime, realisation growing solid. There's no more anger over his injury. The cut of jealousy when he reads about some warrior-prince in a poem or history fighting in great battles or travelling across the world on a far-flung quest isn’t as deep as it used to be. That’s something, at least. Fili has almost accepted his world. Almost.

“I’m done.” Fili croaks after a long time. Sigrid starts and moves to turn the page. “No, I-I’m done reading for now.”

“Oh, all right.” She marks the page with a scarlet ribbon and returns the tome to the shelf by his bed. “Up or down? Would you like a drink? Are you ready to have lunch yet? Any itching?”

“Up. Yes, please. Not just yet. And below the left ear.” With practiced routine, the girl fluffs the pillows behind him, holds a flask of diluted wine to his lips and gently scratches the hollow beneath his earlobe. Fili has lied; there’s nothing there. He just wants her to touch him where he can still feel it. This is only temporary, he tells himself, until she grows bored of him or her father marries her off to some rich lord from a foreign land, and he will treasure every moment with her. For weeks now, Sigrid has been coming every afternoon, shooing Ori away and telling him to go lie down, fussing over Fili with a tenderness that’s either romantic or motherly depending on her mood. Today is the former; she smoothes his hair back when she’s done, tucking it behind his ear and arranging it carefully over his shoulder, her mouth soft and pensive, the left corner lifting upwards in a mute half-smile.

“It’s beautiful.” She finally whispers, watching it gleam in the firelight, threads of gold and copper and straw and sunshine, sparks flitting in and out under her touch. “I always wanted golden hair. It’s so rare in the North.”

“Thorin doesn’t like it.” Fili confesses. “It always used to vex him. No one else in our tribe has golden hair anymore. Said it made me stand out in battle, made me a target.” There’s a tightness in his stomach, and Sigrid flinches at the memory. It did. “He made me darken my hair once, with pitch and soot, when we were trying to track down a band of orcs who’d been stealing our goats. But then it rained and black started running everywhere. We were chasing them through the woods and the muck got into my eyes. I couldn’t see! I ran straight into a tree and knocked myself senseless. I woke up hours and hours later half-buried in the undergrowth with Kili running around trying to find me, screaming the woods down.” Sigrid had been smiling throughout the story, but at the end, her smile faded. Fili bites back a wince. “I’ll be able to grow it out now.” He offers, trying to bring that smile back. “Like those maidens in courtly love poems, who lie about on sofas with their hair at their feet.” Except there would be no knight coming his aid.

“Oh, Fili, stop being ridiculous.” But there’s a smile with those rolling eyes, and Fili considers it a victory.

* * *

 

Thorin becomes distant and closed off from everybody. He doesn’t have a brother to confide in like the others, and after a hasty dinner, he retires alone night after night to the chamber that’s his again after a century of neglect. It’s all dim and dark and rotten and coated in a thick layer of dust. He’s afraid to touch anything and instead sleeps on a hasty pallet before the fire, leaving the remnants of his old life in shadow. They’re going through the rooms one by one, clearing them out and making them fit for habitation again. Balin insists that Thorin is next. He wonders what his old friend will say when he finds it so untouched.

But despite his early retirement, the smallness of his living quarters, Thorin finds it hard to get any sleep. There’s too much going on in his head, writhing and screaming and clawing at the inside of his skull. With Bilbo and Gandalf and Thranduil gone, Thorin expected to find peace, but they’re still here, lingering in his memory, their voices soft and thin but not yet fading away. He feels cheated, hunched over in his mouldy furs, remembering in excruciating detail just how deeply they all wronged him – Bilbo with his lies, Gandalf with his treachery, Thranduil with his merciless cruelty. It foolish, dangerous, stupid of him, to trust those outsiders. It’s not a mistake he’ll readily make again.

It’s corrupted everything he thought he knew about Bilbo, a deep, deep wound that he’s not sure can ever recover from. They were more than just friends – there was a connection that bound their souls together, a deep love that seemed familial and romantic but at the same time transcended it. They never consummated that love – there was never a chance, a breath of freedom, a rush of courage deep enough to pursue. Thorin never asked. There was a cleanness in that forced chastity. Somehow, it made that love between them more real. Another lie. Everything about Bilbo was a lie. Bitterly, Thorin hunches his shoulders inside the blanket, watching a piece of coal splinter in the grate. A shard of black falls away, lost in the flames. Fool. He won’t be so quick to trust again.

Thinking on the future is even more terrifying than the past. There’s nothing. A black void. Thorin looks into the unease and doubt and fear strikes deep in the marrow of his bones, a chill that no fire can abate. What will happen to Erebor after? Who will take care of her? Kili doesn’t want the throne; he struggles at every opportunity, rebelling against Thorin’s rule for the sake of it. He just wants to disturb and disrupt.

In some ways, it would have been easier if Fili were dead. That way they could all just mourn his loss with a warrior’s funeral and keep him pristine and perfect in memory. He lingers on, an uncertain placeholder in the line of succession, an ugly reminder of Thorin’s failure. Kili won’t move on while Fili is still alive. He still hopes, uselessly, that this burden can somehow be shifted from him. But he'll take the pain if it keeps Fili close. Thorin doesn’t have any regret for saving him. None. Not even the smallest, most infinitesimal part of him questions whether or not he did the right thing.

* * *

 

For the first time in almost a month, they meet face-to-face, close enough to reach out and touch one another. Kili wears the silver cloak, mended, a circlet perched atop a weave of ornate braids sealed with golden clasps. His beard has grown already, an inch or so of chestnut curls running along his thin jaw. Where’s her wild little archer? Tauriel bites on her tongue as she examines him, growing hollow. Kili’s already lost. He’s becoming somebody else, somebody apart from her, from a different world.

“I hope it’s not an imposition, Tauriel.” Kili visibly flinches at the deep voice behind him. His eyes seem sunken in his face, dull, and he won’t meet her gaze. How can they all look at him and not see it? How are they so blind to his suffering? “Thranduil has very kindly allowed our people to take his elf-path through the Greenwood, and while he’s offered a guide, I would like you to also attend.” So he trusted her more than Thranduil. Or maybe he’s hoping that she’ll grow homesick and remain behind.

“I-I would be honoured to be of service.” Dumbly, Kili stands at Thorin’s right hand, grinding his teeth, nails digging into his palms so hard he’s sure that he’s drawing blood. Thorin drones on, and it wavers in and out of focus. He can’t see anything else, just blood-red and the green of the forest, dancing before him and drifting further and further away. _Don’t leave_ , he mouths, knowing that she’s watching him. But it’s small and pathetic and Kili knows he could never keep her with it.

* * *

 

“Have you slept with her?” Fili asks boldly the night before she’s supposed to leave. The room is less sparse now; there’s a low table before the fire, a thick rug, a sofa of red brocade and gold-painted wood, a tapestry on the largest wall. Kili is curled up on that sofa now, clutching a goblet of wine and staring into the fire.

Kili takes a heavy gulp and doesn’t answer at first. “Yes.” He can’t look over his shoulder at the bed. Over the crackle of the flames he hears Fili’s breath hitch, a strangled groan rumbling in his brother’s throat before he lets it out slowly. “Just once, when Thranduil was still here.”

It’s not a surprise, really. Fili suspects that his brother must have slipped out in the night at least once, caught her on an abandoned stairwell, dragged her into an empty room when he thought nobody was looking. Is it really only once? All he can see is Kili’s silhouette, hunched over, outlined in fire. It’s impossible to tell. “I asked her to marry me.” Kili goes on, half-muffled by the rim of his goblet. “To stay in Erebor.” He lets out a dry, dusty chuckle that catches in his throat. “I was a fool.”

“Was this after I fell?” Kili doesn’t answer. He hunches over further, staring down into his drink. So that was a yes, then. “Fuck, Kili.” Hot anger flushes in Fili’s belly; it’s the most he felt in weeks and he can feel his lifeless body unfurling with it. “How can you be so _stupid?_ Didn’t you realise what was going to happen? A-Are you so wrapped up in your own little world?”

“I didn’t know!” Wine spills across the gold brocade, ruining it as Kili leaps up, gripping the back of the sofa. “I didn’t know what it meant—I wasn’t thinking— I—I— Fili, you were _dying!”_

“So your first thought is to propose to _her?_ ” All Fili has is his voice; he shouts hoarsely, the tendons standing out on his neck, eyes wild. “You self-absorbed—do you even realise what you’ve done to her? You promise to marry her, you make love to her, all the while _knowing_ the throne will be yours within a century. What are you going to do, keep an elf-mistress? Leave this mountain to crumble and give the crown to cousin Thorin?”

“Shut up!” Kili responds in kind, venom in his voice. “Shut _up,_ Fili! You don’t know a _thing._ You’re just locked away in this room. You’re nothing!” As soon as it comes out, regret stabs in his chest, sharp as a knife between his ribs. They both heave in a shocked, frozen silence, unable to see each other with Kili black from the firelight behind him and Fili lying prone on the bed.

“I-I’m sorry.” He finally stammers, blank with shock. “I didn’t mean it—”

“Go.” Fili’s voice is cold. “Go away.”

“Please—”

“I said _go away!”_ With a ragged gasp, Kili draws back from him. In his guilt and shame he haltingly, clumsily staggers for the door, fumbling with the bolt. It bangs shut behind him, leaving Fili alone in the dim chamber.

As soon as he’s alone, Fili screams. It tears in his throat, scraping until it feels like he’s bleeding from the roughness. Air stagnates in his shrivelled lungs, stalling, and he screams again, voiceless, choking on it. He hates Kili for his cruelty. He hates Tauriel for taking his brother away from him. He hates Thorin for keeping him alive. He hates this whole damn fucking pathetic mountain and every soul inside of it. For a brief, hot moment, Fili wishes he was dead, that he didn’t have to endure another moment of this torture. But he can’t even kill himself. He can’t throw himself out the window or drag a knife across his throat or swallow poison. Another weak, silent scream breaks free, and another, his chest seized. The hatred claims his body, every inch of it, smothering him, holding him down. Fili bites down in an effort to silence the screams, biting and biting until his top teeth meet the bottom in a flash of pain. Blood seeps in his mouth, trickles wetly down his chin, and his sliced lip throbs, fills his head, his ears, his neck, down to his shoulders, before fading into that terrifying numbness.

* * *

 

Again, he opens the door without knocking. Dizzy, Kili pitches forward and falls onto his knees, panting from exertion. He ran all the way here, half-drunk, stumbling, falling more than once on the twisting stairs, getting lost and having to frantically retrace his steps. But he’s here now. Kili crawls, wearing only a plain linen shirt and loose trousers, wild-eyed, the braids pulled from his hair. He looks like madness.

Tauriel sits up and flings her arms out, and he consoles himself in them, pushing his face between her breasts and heaving in and out. His hair is damp with sweat and she kisses it, feeling the stone-sturdy body tremble against her. Something’s broken in Kili. It’s taken the fight out of him. He’s weak in her arms as she lies down, enveloping him in her lithe body. There’s no kisses, no love-making. They just hold each other, Kili shuddering in her arms, wracked with an unknown terror, Tauriel stroking his hair silently, waiting for those unspoken horrors to fade.

In the morning, she wakes to find him sitting apart from her, leaning against the wall with his knees drawn up to his chest. His hair falls over his eyes as he broods, staring at the ground. He shifts only slightly when he realises Tauriel is awake, his dark gaze flicking up to her, distant and hazy, and then returning to his bare feet.

“You have to go.” He’s as dry and frail as old leaves. Tauriel fights a shudder at his thin voice and yearns to him. She sits up, stretches her hand across the floor, offering herself, but he shrinks away from it. “Stay in Mirkwood. Apologise to Thranduil. Surely he’ll have mercy.”

“He won’t.” It’s louder than she wished, high and frightened. “Kili, I can’t go.” The thudding of her pulse quickens in desperation, pushing at her ears. “I-I can’t leave you.” He doesn’t understand. There’s no other for her, no second lover, no life afterward. All she has is Kili. She curses her frail, elvish heart, gritting her teeth and willing herself into a state of composure.

“Fili knows.” He sniffs, the only sign of emotion he’s given so far this morning. “I told him. He knows we made love. He knows I asked you to marry me. He’s so _furious_ , Tauriel. A-And he’ll tell Thorin. I know he will. He’s a bastard like that. They’re all the same. They just—All they care about is the crown. They don’t care about me—none of them give a _shit_.” A hand passes over those dark, weary eyes. “I can’t keep fighting, Tauriel. I’ve got nothing left. I give up.” Kili trails off with a long, shuddering sigh, curling in on himself. He’s so _small_. There’s an odd beauty in his smallness, well-formed in miniature, right down to the wrinkles on his knuckles, the ridges in his ears, the little cleft in his chin. She loves him, every part, more in this moment of crisis and self-doubt than she has in any moment of pride and glory.

She crawls across the stone, sleek and quiet as a cat, and leans down to place her mouth on his. The kiss is a shock. It robs Kili of air, and he opens his mouth in surprise. He pushes against her for a strained moment, fighting it, but as a slim-boned hand cups the back of his head and her fingers press against his scalp, Kili sinks down. As hot and bright as liquid sunshine, the kiss fills him up, winds around his heart and breathes life into it. It’s strength. Kili drinks in her love, the only thing she has left to give, an arm winding around her neck.

“Fight them.” She breathes against his quivering lips. “Don’t let them beat you down, love. It’s killing you.” Fingertips trace the edge of his beard, in the hollow of his cheek, trailing down until it thickens into those wiry curls. It’s softer than it looks, springing back as her touch shifts. She could get used to it.

“No one believes in me—”

“I do.” How can she say that? She barely knows him. Kili draws back to argue, but when he sees the utter devotion in her eyes, open and honest, pure in her love, words fail him. She does. It stokes the fire in him. But it’s not rage, tearing him down and hollowing him out. It’s faith, surety, casting his fragile heart in iron. “You’re the only thing I have left to believe in, Kili.”

Soft and fluid, Tauriel lays him down, undresses him slowly, exploring his foreign skin with her mouth the way she once read in a poem written in the margins of a love treatise. Her little lump of clay. It’s all she has. Tauriel worships him, head bent, on her knees, feeling him grow and pulse and throb against her until with a shudder, a keening gasp that sends a shiver down her spine, Kili collapses with release.

“Come back to me.” He whispers afterwards, when they’re dressed and Tauriel has wiped her mouth clean and they’ve removed every trace of each other. “Please.”

* * *

 

In the morning, Ori finds Fili, drowsy from all the blood he’s lost, the lower half of his face drenched red, staining the green sheets black. He screams, drops the bowl of tacky porridge meant of his breakfast, slopping grey all over his shoes.

Fili won’t tell him what happened. He stares at the ceiling, blinking occasionally, no emotion in his face as Oin stitches his lip together and smears a foul-smelling salve all over it. There’ll be a scar, the old healer warns, but his beard will hide it. Thorin comes in, bent and quiet, watching. He asks with a shaking voice was Fili was trying to do, asking ten different times, convoluted and indirect, if Fili was trying to end his own life. Fili says nothing, only that he and Kili had an argument, that he got angry. He refuses to admit what they argued about. That secret he keeps for himself, for now. Thorin leaves but Ori remains at his side, too frightened to ask what happened, too nervous to talk about anything else.

Thorin finds Kili stumbling by himself in a lonely hall. He scolds him like a disobedient child, demanding answers. Kili weakly admits that he called his brother nothing, and Thorin hits him, hard, for the first time in decades, losing control, seizing his shoulders, shaking him and shouting, and it takes three other dwarves to pry them apart.

Eventually, he makes an appearance in Fili’s room, hovering in the doorway, grabbing handfuls of his clothes and twisting them through his fingers. The left side of his face is still red. Fili sends Ori away without a moment’s hesitation, and Ori excuses himself, shooting Kili a dark, uneasy glance that they all catch, looking over his shoulder at Fili with a little shake of his head. As soon as he’s gone, Kili runs to the bed and collapses beside it on his knees, taking Fili’s dead hand and caressing it, as though he could bring it back to life by sheer force of will.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, breathless in his terror. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t—You know I didn’t mean it, Fili. I was angry, I—”

“Never say anything like that again.” Fili speaks through gritted teeth and his eyes are hard. It masks the pity in his heart, leaking at the sight of poor Kili so distraught and ashamed at what he’s done.

“I won’t. I won’t.” Kili tightens his grip, for all the good it will do. “Please, forgive me. I-I’m so sorry. Ori said there was blood everywhere—what did you _do,_ Fili? Why did you do this? Do you hate me so much?”

“Calm down.” Kili nods, breathes in deeply and hold it. He hangs on to Fili’s every word, even now, clinging to him. “I was angry. I just... I didn’t have control of myself.” Why did he do it? Even now, in the clarity of morning, Fili still doesn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” His face crumples and releases his hold, head sinking into his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry.” Kili gasps for air, and Fili feels oddly repulsed by it. Typical Kili, thinking a flagellant show of self-pity will earn his forgiveness. But it’s working. Fili just wants to hold him, to whisper in his ear that it’s all right, that he forgives him. “You know that they’ll never leave me alone now?” Kili lifts his head. “Oin told Thorin. He thought I was trying to end my own life.”

“Were you?” Pale with horror, Kili can’t control the crack in his voice.

“I don’t know.” The hardness is dissolving in him, pity and fear eating away at the edges. “I-I don’t know, Kili. I just...” To his own shame, Fili’s eyes are stinging as the memory of last night is dragged to the fore, the hurt flushing anew in his heart. “ _Never_ say that to me again.”

“I won’t.” Kili promises. “I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.” He swallows hard and brushes his tousled hair out of his eyes. “Is it... that bad for you, Fili? Is it really so awful?”

“I’m tired.” It’s all he can say in response to it. “I’m so tired. I don’t know how I can keep going on.”

“ _No.”_ Frenzied, Kili leans over him and grips his shoulders. At least he can feel this touch, heavy and slow, digging into the dip of his collarbone. His muscles are already wasting away. “Don’t say that, please. I’ve got you. I’m not going to leave you, ever.”

* * *

 

And he won’t. Kili refuses to go down and help with the surveys, to wish the small band of dwarves goodbye before they venture west. He already bade Tauriel farewell. Instead, he stretches beside Fili on the bed and cracks open an history of the Second Age translated in a clumsy Westron, the book closest to hand. He’s a faster reader than his brother; Kili skims the words, flitting about from line to line without taking much in. Fili listlessly tells him when to turn, half-reading, pretending to be absorbed for Kili’s benefit. He’s already read this before with Ori, days ago. He falls asleep again, but Kili keeps reading, flicking through the pages, a particular line quickly catching his interest – _After losing her husband in the battle of Norod Faer, Linuin died of elvish grief, having wasted in the loss of her love. Her people considered the death two-fold, losing many wives to the same fatal heart-sickness._

Many wives? Kili sits up, edging away from his brother and spreading the book out on his lap. He keeps an eye out for the references to death in the records of those glittering noble families. Another fallen warrior, another wasted wife. Another. Something bad had happened to the world at this time, an evil king named Sauron ravaging the lands in his war against the elvish people. Kili read with his heart hammering in his throat as the names multiplied, so often in twos, until that uneasy suspicion becomes a cruel reality, searing in Kili’s head, pressing against his the back of his eyes and making it hard to see.

“Fili,” His head lolls on his neck at the frantic shaking of his shoulder. “Fili, wake up. Please. Please.”

“What?” He sees Kili crouching over him, falling apart at the edges, wide-eyed, mouth lax in his horror. Fili’s instantly awake. “Kili, what?”

“I’ve killed her.” He gestures half-heartedly to the book. “Elves—they die when their lovers die. They’re bound to each other. I-I’ve been reading all about it.”

With his heart throbbing once, dull and heavy, Fili closes his eyes. “Sit me up.” Shaking, Kili replaces all the pillows and cushions, setting his brother right, smoothing the blanket out over his lap. “Breathe,” he commands again, keeping his voice firm and resolute. “Breathe, Kili.” Kili sighs in and out, sitting with his shoulders hunched, his fingers little white knots gleaming with gems.

“Is it true?” Kili’s high, keening voice could shatter glass. “Do they really die?”

“They die.” He crumples. The panic strikes him, heavy and painful as an iron hammer, smashing at his ribs. “She made the decision.” Fili softens as he always does when Kili gets upset. “She knows what’s going to happen. She knows that you can’t marry her.”

“I’ve killed her.” There’s no rage, impotent anger to fling into the void. Kili is quiet, cold and still in his shock, horror seizing him slowly, turning his body to ice.

“Tauriel killed herself.” There’s no joy in this. Kili struggles with this revelation, shaking his head. “She didn’t want you to know, else she would have told you. She was trying to protect you.”

“I can’t.” Kili balls his hands in shaking fists, trying to hide them. “I won’t let her die.” He looks at his brother, desperate and pleading, the way he always would when he got himself into trouble, hoping Fili would somehow come to his rescue. “Don’t tell Thorin—You haven’t have you? Please, Fili, tell me he doesn’t know yet.”

“I haven’t told him.” Fili chooses every word carefully, knowing how tenuous his brother has become, how thin and brittle and stretched. Tauriel will push him over the edge. She tortures and agonises him, turning him inside out. Anger seethes in his chest against her, against the both of them, but he pushes it down, keeping himself blank and closed-off. Kili sags in relief, tired eyes falling closed for a moment. “You were with her last night, weren’t you?” He nods after a strained moment. “Oh, Kili, you fool.” He can’t clean up this mess. He can’t fix things the way he used to.

“I won’t leave her.” Fili watches him, resolute in his shock but unable to meet his eyes, still fighting the quiver in his limbs. It’s more dangerous than he ever imagined. If he forces a decision, Fili doesn’t quite know which way his brother would turn. He struggles with this rewrite of his destiny, fighting against it at every turn. The burden of kingship overwhelmes him, and Tauriel is an escape, a sanctuary that nobody else can provide. One wrong step will send Kili straight into her arms. Fili only has one defence against this attack, only one way of holding his brother together. Perhaps he can still save this.

“I won’t tell Thorin.” He finally whispers. Kili’s head jerks up with a choked sob. “I’ll keep your secret, Kili. But you have to promise me—”

“Anything,” Kili pants, scrabbling for his hand, pawing at it. Self-loathing builds as Fili looks at his pathetic brother. It’s good that he can’t move anything; he’d be unable to control himself right now if he could, throwing his arms around Kili and swearing to protect him. But he can’t. This is for Kili’s own good. It’s a necessity. But it doesn’t soothe the disgust that contaminates him, bitter as metal on his tongue. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to control and manipulate Kili, but he can’t see any other way of keeping him. “Anything, anything, anything.”

“You’ll listen to Thorin and I. Stay in Erebor and let us guide you. Do exactly as we say.” Kili falters, and his grip on Fili’s hand falls slack. A flash of anger and rebellion cuts through the shock, dark in his wide eyes, and the terror of losing him strikes at the heart of Fili’s disgust. “Kili.”

“I will. I will.” It crumbles under his fear. He reaches out to his brother, the old protector, his shield against the darkness. “I’ll behave. I’ll do whatever you ask of me.” The rushed, stumbled promise already sounds hollow in Kili’s ears. Something severs in his heart, cutting him in two as the impossibility of what he’s been told unfolds. He knows he’s can’t. “Just—please, Fili. I can’t lose either of you.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Fili, look!” Tilda bounces, radiant as sunshine, holding out a handful of thin, violet-coloured flowers. They’re already drooping in her hands, looking glum in the muffled dimness of Fili’s underground room. “Glory-of-the-snow, first of the year. Aren’t they pretty?” She leans over the bed, thrusting the damp bunch in Fili’s face. “Smell them.” It’s sweet, fresher than anything he’s smelled in months, crisp and cool and tinged with pine needles. Fili wants to eat them. “Is there a vase?” The girl frowns around the room. “Where can I put them?”

“They’ll die in here, Tilda. They need the sun and the light to live.” Crestfallen, she stares down at her hand, fingers stained green from where she seized the blossoming flowers right at the roots. “It’s all right.” Somehow, Fili remembers what it’s like to be gentle. “Put them in my lap. That way I can still smell them for a while. They do smell very nice.”

Tilda took the news better than anyone, even Sigrid, expected. There were only a very few tears at first, hidden with a defiant lift of her chin and a sniffle. If anything, she’s the easiest one to deal with, thoughtless in her awkward questions, demanding to know the details of Fili’s injury rather than tiptoeing about it. Sigrid clucks her tongue and sighs, but Fili’s relieved. He hates most of all when people act as if nothing at all has changed, putting on tight, forced smiles and hovering uneasily at his elbow and asking far too many times if there was anything that he needed.

Spring flowers, then. Fili imagines the outside world – the snow lingering only in tiny greyish puddles, the optimistic chirp of birdsong, the weaving cracks of melted ice-water cutting through the naked dirt. Envy crawls in his stomach, makes his soul ugly. Sigrid insists that Fili’s sense of touch is growing. She even drew a line across his neck in ink, just below the sharp knot of his throat, and three weeks later another half an inch down, showing the retreat of his paralysis. She thinks that little by little it might drain away, like a crack in a barrel seeping water by the drop. Fili refuses to indulge her and asks for the ink to be washed off.

One exciting day, Kili lifts him up, like some kind of oversized baby, and carries him over to the long softa. There are a hundred new things to discover – the embroidery of his cushion, the carved design along the wooden legs, the geometric engraving over the mantlepiece, the brass candlestick on the low table, the rug over the stole tile. Ori and Sigrid both realise how much Fili likes looking at things, and almost every day another little trinket is added – a picture, a tiny statue, a painted jar – until the room is crammed, gleaming from steel and gold and porcelain. It’s too much and everything together looks ugly and jumbled, but they think that they’re helping, and he can’t bear to deny them. Fili can play board games, dictating his moves to the opposing player, and Tilda helps with cards, holding Fili’s hand for him and leaning in so he can whisper the next trick into her ear.

“When are you going to go out?” Sigrid asks quietly after Tilda is gone. They’re both lying on the couch, Fili leaning against Sigrid, his head positioned carefully on her shoulder. They look like lovers. Fili’s glad he can’t look down. His own body is a source of shame to him now. His limbs have have shrivelled from months of disuse, sticks wrapped in loose rags, his stomach growing round and soft, moon-pale, frail and elderly-looking. Another loss, but Sigrid inexplicably doesn’t seem to mind. “What about one of those chairs with wheels for legs? I’ve seen people use them in Lake-Town before.”

“No.” The thought of it fills him with terror. He hates this room, this cell. He hates the walls that close in on him. He hates the bed. He hates the stupid tasteless knick-knacks that they insist on bringing him. He hates the dim candles. He hates reading the same books over and over again. But the idea of going out there and having them all look at him with that pity and guilt and shame, in their tens and dozens and hundreds, makes his withered stomach heave. He’s a horse with a broken leg, a bird with no wings. A crown prince who can’t walk or sit up or hold a knife or fuck or go a night without soiling himself. What use does Erebor have for him? He’s just a living reminder of Thorin’s greatest regret. What purpose does he have anymore, other than whiling away his meaningless life in this overstuffed bedroom with a tiny handful of friends who any day will grow bored with him and leave? What’s the point to any of this?

Sometimes he gets deep enough in his funk to really believe it. He gets broody and quiet, turning away from his books or games or whatever half-hearted activity they’ve cooked up for him and closes his eyes, wishing that it would all just go away. Maybe he’ll be lucky and his lungs will forget how to take in air, or his heart will stop beating. But it never lasts long. It can’t. Because Kili comes back every night, wild with anger after fighting with Thorin, embarrassed at offending some visiting delegate, uncertain about a traditional ceremony he has to take part in the next day, curious about old laws that Fili’s memorised by now after a dozen readings. He breathes life into Fili’s hollow heart, melts the frost that’s crystallised on his bones. Vicariously, Fili lives through his brother, drinking in every detail that Kili can remember, and Kili in turn taps Fili’s clever brain for any drop of information that he could have. Together, Kili murmurs one night – after Fili explained for fifteen minutes just why it was important that Kili _only_ spoke Khuzdul when he visited the blessing of the Stone-dweller caves the next day and to keep his hands and feet and head uncovered – together, the two of them almost made up the crown prince that Thorin, and Erebor, want.

* * *

 Kili counts the days down, lying awake in the cluttered bedchamber and watching the firelight die. FIli sleeps fitfully, mumbling something under his breath, and Kili stretches out, rests a hand against the side of his face so he knows he’s not alone. He’s desperate and greedy for news, snatching papers out of Thorin’s hand and bursting in on private conversations. They all think Kili misses his mother. Tongues click in condescending sympathy, and Kili lets them believe it. It’s so much better than the truth.

Knowing what he does now, that Tauriel will die without him, has forced a change. His heart breaks every time he dwells on it, and every time, Kili has to force himself back together, wipe his face and wait for the breath to even out. He has choose between her and everything he has. Between her and Erebor. Between her and Thorin. Between her and Fili. It’s Fili that’s kept him here this long. “He’s living for you.” Ori warned him one evening before they were about to trade places. “Without you, he’s broken.” Fili’s broken already, but Kili shoulders the burden with all the strength he has. He needs Fili too. Every fight they have now, rare as they are, attacks Kili with a sharpness that cuts down to the bone. He can’t bear it. He’ll say or do anything to make his brother happy. Anything.

* * *

 Somewhere, deep in this strange dream-world, a child-version of her lives, untouched, unsullied, by the passing of time. Dís shivers in the chilly breeze and the sun pierces through the veil of grief over her eyes. Erebor. Was this home? It seems so alien to her, so vast and strange. A deep thrum of fear sounds in her heart. Durin frowns down at her, staring blankly through eyes of stone that peel her skin away in layers. She feels admonished.

Thorin waits, holds one hand out for her, primly, with a shaky smile, and Dís walks straight past him. She would be perfectly happy never to speak to him again. “Mama!” Kili throws his arms around her neck and showers her with kisses, laughing and chattering, small as a child again. His beard’s grown out, dark as ink against the winter-pale of his face, and his braided hair is an inch longer past his shoulders. Even still, she feels disconnected, in a daze.

“Where is he?” Her voice cracks and Kili’s face falls, understanding in an instant what she means. He murmurs a soft reassurance, taking her by the hand. Terror tempers the swelling grief in her heart, uncertainty at what it is she’ll find. She still has the letter folded up in her pocket, smudged with tears, telling her the half-truth about Fili’s fall. Thorin didn’t mention that he had sent her boys on alone. It was Dwalin that told her that. She beat and bullied it out of him with that shrew-like mercilessness that every dam who lives alone amongst dwarves learns overtime. Quickly, Dís realises where Kili is taking her. Thror’s room. The grandest of all the bedchambers and the most remote, an eagle’s nest high in the upper galleries of the the palace. Thorin was either giving Fili the highest honour he could or trying to shut him away. She’s not sure. She doesn’t know the first thing about him anymore.

Then Kili opens the door, and there he is, her Fili, lying on a long sofa before the fire in a dim, stuffy room that’s full of garish trinkets taking up every inch of free space, propped up by cushions and pillows with a blanket spread over his legs and his hands folded in his lap. Ori’s there, sitting beside him, and there’s a book resting on a wooden cradle, held just so at Fili’s eyeline. It seems like he’s just lying there at first, relaxing, but there’s a slackness to him in his neck and shoulders, and one leg is twisted in the blanket in a way that would be painful to anybody else, but Fili can’t even notice.

Her baby boy heaves against her with unshed tears as she covers him, extending her arms, bundling him up. He is a baby now, helpless and terrified and unable to save himself. Dís knees on the rug and stretches herself over the sofa, feeling the thud-thud-thud of his heart drum against her ears. Ori leaves and takes the book with him, a page torn, but Kili waits beside her, his legs drawn up, watching him with those large brown eyes that seem to see everything and nothing all at once. Whether it’s relief or shame, or both, at seeing her, Dís doesn’t know. Fili comes apart in her arms, breaks into pieces, and she whispers softly that it will be all right.

Afterwards, when she’s wiped his face down and given him a drink of water, they can finally talk. Dís sits on the edge of the sofa beside Fili, and Kili sits cross-legged on the ground, leaning one elbow against the brocade cushion. They tell her about the trolls, the Misty Mountains, Mirkwood, the barrels on the river, Lake-Town, Smaug, Erebor. It’s only at the mention of Ravenhill that Kili’s voice cracks and he can’t go on, and Fili has to fill in the rest of the story, flat and emotionless, like giving out martial orders. His eyes are dead. Balin summons them to dinner; Kili reluctantly leaves but Dís won’t go anywhere. Leaving Fili alone is unthinkable.

“It’s not his fault.” Fili can read the bitter curl of her lip, the flash in her eyes. “Please, don’t blame Thorin for this.” She wants to. Oh, she wants to. “I wasn’t a child to be coddled and protected. I knew what I was setting myself up for. So did Kili. We were doing what was asked of us.” He’s long grown tired of blaming other people. There’s only one person responsible for this, and Thorin already killed him in revenge. What was the point in seeking out further fault? It wouldn’t get his legs back. “He’s already burning with grief. Don’t make it worse for him.”

He’s aged fifty years in the course of a few seasons. Being locked in this broken body seems to have sped up his mind, and the longer Dís sits, the older he seems. It breaks her heart to see him like this, her little lion-cub boy. Dís would have done anything, anything to take this punishment for him, to bear the brunt of his suffering, but she never had a chance to. Fili senses her guilt and does his best to remedy it, but his well-measured philosophy is a cold comfort. She knows him and how much the throne meant to him and how truly terribly he would be suffering now, watching from his sick-bed as his birthright was taken away from him.

“I won’t lie.” Fili murmurs. “It’s hard, Mama. Sometimes, I really don’t think I can go on. I wish that– that I’d just… You know, that it would be definite. At least I might be whole at the other end.” Dís listens in silence, stroking his hair. “But I– I see Kili, and he’s struggling so much. He needs help, and no one else can give it to him. It’s taken eighty years for me to learn all of this, and he’s got what, maybe half that to catch up? It’s going to be so hard for him. I have to be here. I wish he didn’t have to do this, but…” Dís smiles weakly in understanding. “As long as we have each other, we can overcome this somehow. I believe that. I have to.” He’s got nothing else.

* * *

 Fili pretends to be asleep when Kili slips out at night. And Kili pretends he didn’t hear the sudden start of his breath as he lifted back the covers. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Neither of them have the energy or will to fight each other again.

Oh, Mahal, he’s missed this. It’s a pain that attacked him, a sickness spreading through his body and robbing him of his senses. The milk-white of her skin dusted with freckles, the poison-red of her hair, the soft jut of her bones beneath smooth flesh – he drinks it all down in a single thirsty gulp, wrestling himself out of his clothes and hers, spilling against her thigh in his eagerness and laughing carelessly through a flush of embarrassment. He rests one elbow beside Tauriel’s head and trails his right hand up and down her body, waiting, fingertips brushing every soft curve and dip and ridge, fleshing out the memory that had dulled after months of loneliness.

“I was worried you wouldn’t come back.” Were her eyes always so shockingly green? It’s like leaves of a deadly vine in full sunlight. She’s made up of the forest. Going back to it for a while seems to have brought a new life into her. Tauriel is an orb of light in this stone prison and he feels his own skin flush from the heat of it. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The fleshy half-moon of her mouth droops downwards. “I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.” Sadness softens the joy in her, and the light dims a little. Kili opens his mouth to speak, to admit that he knows all about the life-debt he now owes her. But Fili’s words float through his memory – she didn’t want Kili to know. And he doesn’t want to spoil this. Not yet.

“You always have a home here.” He tries to smile. “Even when– when I marry. I don’t want you to leave.”

“Kili–”

“We’ll make it work, somehow. I’ll put Thorin off. I’ll make myself seem so awful no dam will want to marry me for any amount of gold and power. I’ll even spread rumours I like dwarves more. They hate that. I’ll do anything.”

“You’re not sabotaging Erebor for me.” A slim hand closes around Kili’s wrist, holds him still. “I know that… that in time, you won’t be mine anymore. I still chose you. I love you too much to let you ruin yourself and your people. So let’s not talk about it. Not yet. Let’s just enjoy the few years we have. And when the time comes, let me go. Can you do that?”

No. He can’t, and Tauriel knows that. He’d tear himself apart in an effort to hold onto her. She knows that when the time comes, she’ll be the one to draw the knife and cut herself out of his life and suffer that fatal wound in the process. In a way, her hold on the throne is stronger than even Thranduil could have imagined possible, but there’s no joy in having this immense power. It presses down on her, the weight of stone and gold, and she’s only made of twigs and leaves and sunlight. She can’t hold it up.

* * *

 Dís is a whirlwind. The morning after she arrived, she stood in the middle of the room with an apron tied over her new gold-embroidered gown, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, clicking her tongue and shaking her head. “This,” she proclaims, “won’t do.”

The room is apparently a problem. Of _course_ Fili would feel miserable in this big old tomb, locked away from everybody. Her mother and father’s chamber, Dís assures him, circling the room and picking up the spare socks and dirty trousers that Kili’s left on the floor, would be much better. It was smaller and less grand but deep in the heart of the palace. It was much closer to the Great Hall, with a wide balcony that looked down on the courtyard below where all the big emissaries would be greeted by the King. There was even the occasional beam of sunlight in high summer. Without consulting Thorin, Dís makes plans for everything to be moved, and a team of dwarves dismantle Fili’s massive iron bedstead and carry it down the sweeping stairs. Fili sits on his sofa without his books or letters and pretends to be asleep. Most of the ornaments are thrown out; the last thing Fili needed was more clutter filling up his head. But at Fili’s insistence, she keeps the tapestries and hangings and half-a-dozen painted statues.

“You’ll feel better, darling.” She promises. “And there’s a suite of connecting rooms, too. We can set up a little parlour for formal visitors, and a library.” There’s no point in that. Who’s going to want to see him? But Fili hold his tongue and lets his mother fuss over him. Late in the day, after the bed has been taken apart and put back together at the end and all that’s left is to shift Fili and the sofa, Thorin arrives. It’s quiet at first, low hisses as they circle each other, prodding and jabbing with their barbed words before erupting in an all-out battle, Thorin bellowing and Dís screaming, and Fili’s weak shouting from the fireplace does nothing to break them apart. It’s not about the room at all, and the three of them know it.

Afterwards, Dís can’t stop shaking. She sits on the edge of the sofa, wringing her hands and blinking rapidly as she stares into the fire. “Mama,” Fili says, gently, “he’s already hurting so much over this. Don’t blame him. I won’t ask you again.”

Her head sinks into her hands, and Dís says nothing.

* * *

 Fili insists on making his great migration in the small hours of the night. Dís repeats Sigrid’s insistence that they build a wheeled chair for him, but for now, FIli has to be carried. Kili crouches before the sofa and Dís carefully winds Fili’s arms across his neck and hooks his legs in. Like a child, he’s lifted onto his brother’s back, cheek resting against the broad muscle of his shoulder.

“I remember, you used to carry me like this all the time.” Kili murmurs as they made their way down the black hall. Darkness blurs the walls and the ceiling, but even the air feels different, and if he summons all of his strength, he can lift his head, just a little, and make out the vaguest of shapes in the gloom. His heart thumps in pitiful excitement. This is what counts for an adventure now. “When we’d go running around in the woods and I’d get too tired to walk home. Remember?”

“And you’d throw a tantrum if I said no. Of course I remember. Even when you were too big, you’d still make me carry you. I almost broke my back, trying to lug your dead weight around.” He wouldn’t make a joke like this to anyone except Kili. They would have flinched away at it and stammered an apology. But Kili laughs at the memory, pausing to adjust his grip on Fili’s legs.

“Well, I won’t say no. Never.” He speaks up after a time. “I’ll always carry you.”

Fili closes his eyes, the warm of Kili’s back spreading across his cheek. “Mm, I know.”

* * *

 The dreaded chair takes a week. Kili wheels it in, beaming. The seat is made of polished wood with satin cushioning and the joints all a thin, light steel. The wheels are bigger than Fili imagined, the diameter spanning his arm.

“Ooh, try it, try it.” Kili pushes it right up to the bed. “Please? We don’t have to go anywhere.” Fili sighs, but what power does he have to stop this? With Kili taking him by the chest and Ori the legs, they lift him up and position him carefully in the chair. For a moment, it seems all right, but then Fili slumps forward, unable to support himself, and with a gasp Kili catches him before he slips out.

“Back’s too straight.” Fili muttered. “I can’t sit up, remember?”

“Here – it’s fine.” Ori fumbles at one of the silk ties on the four-poster bed. “We can– sit him up again, Kili. Here.” He winds the length of silk across Fili’s chest, just under his arms. “It’s not too tight, is it, Fili? Can you still breathe?”

“It’s fine.” Fili muttered tonelessly, staring ahead  as Kili positioned his hands neatly in his lap. If he concentrates really, really hard, he can keep his head up and turn from side to side. It’s a secret he’s keeping for now. He doesn’t want to give anybody false hope.

“ _Yes!”_ Kili punches the air. “Where do you want to go? Mama’s still having all the rooms set up, but you can have a look. Or you could go out onto the balcony. Or out in the hallway. This isn’t _too_ heavy. I bet Ori and I could take you down the stairs–”

“ _No!_ ” The others jump. “No,” Fili repeats again, wringing the emotion out of his voice. “Just the next room for now. Please.” He pretends he can’t see Ori shrugging in his periphery, or Kili biting hard on his lip.

* * *

 At least Dís and Sigrid get along. There was an uneasiness in their first conversation, Dís seeing Sigrid as a flighty girl with a passing interest, Sigrid seeing Dís as a typically overbearing mother who ruled over her son with an iron fist. But when Dís sees the way Sigrid looks at her boy, the hesitant twitch in her mouth, and the way Fili stares back, slightly bewildered that she’s even still here. It soothes her, and she leaves them alone.

“It _is_ nicer in here.” Sigrid paces a small circle around the room. “Mm, even the air is fresher. And Ori said you might even get some sunlight later on in the year.” Fili sighs, listless against the pillow. “Don’t you like it?”

“I do. It’s good. I just…” If he could, FIli would have shrugged. Sigrid sits on the edge of the bed and takes his hand. “She’s talking about a suite of rooms and she got that damn chair on wheels made up so I can get around. And it’s all just lip-service, isn’t it? None of it matters. Nobody’s going to want to come and see me.”

“Fili, that’s not true.” Her eyes harden as Fili opens his mouth to protest. “You don’t have your hands or legs anymore, but you still have your mouth, and your mind. You’re _so_ clever. Much more so than Kili, or even Thorin. You could lecture students or dictate to a scribe or even just listen to people Thorin and the like don’t have time for.” But there’s no joy or anticipation in Fili’s eyes. “Surely that’s got to be better than this bed.”

“I… It’s a sweet thought, Sigrid, but we don’t think like that. Other people aren’t so understanding.”

Sigrid stares down at his limp hand. A scar runs over the back of it, gleaming white through the scattered tufts of blonde on his knuckles. “Are you ashamed?” She asks after a time, cautious and unsure.

“I don’t know.” Fili mulls over the question. “Maybe. I think there are other people that are ashamed of me. It’s strange – there’s so much honour and glory, dying in battle. We write about it and have these elaborate funerals for the dead, but… no one talks about the people who come back in pieces. Sometimes, it… feels almost like I’ve been cheated out of that glory.” But it wouldn’t have been an honourable death for Fili. There was no honour in the way they cornered him like a doormouse, laughed as he tried to escape through their legs, beating him and mocking him and dragging him by the hair. There’s no honour in the way he told his brother to run.

“Well, that’s stupid.” Sigrid huffs. “You gave everything for these people, and the way they just shove you out of the way and think they can get away with it – it’s not _right_ , Fili. You’re not dead. And we’ll fight for you, Kili and Ori and your mother and I. But we can’t do anything if you don’t fight for yourself. Promise you’ll do that.” Softer, she reaches out and touches the side of his face. Bone-dry, Fili swallows hard. “For me?”

Mahal, he can't say no to that. “I-I’ll try.”

* * *

 After two months, Dís forgives her brother. She does it more out of pity, a way to escape the crawling tedium of his penitence. He is sorry, sorrier than she first thought. Sorrier than she thinks even Fili knows.

It’s late when she knocks on his door, but she knows he’ll still be awake. He’s dressed for bed but lets her in. “Thought we could have a nightcap.” Dís holds up a bottle of wine. “It’s time we talked about this.”

There’s silence at first. Thorin drinks down her peace offering with a stoic dullness in his eyes, resigned, waiting for the killing blow. But she starts with a memory. “Frerin used to try and steal wine from the cellars all the time? And he got caught once, by a guard, and he looked so much like you that he said he was Thorin. And when Father found out, he knew that it couldn’t possibly have been you?”

Thorin snorts and the terror dissolves in his chest  She wasn't going to leave him. “Of course it was Frerin. He was always the trouble-maker. Remember when he broke Mother’s best vase? The one she got for her wedding?”

“Oh yes!” Dís can’t help but laugh. “She lined the three of us up and demanded to know who broke it. Neither of us would give Frerin away, and we stood there for hours and hours until Frerin cracked and owned up. And then at the end she said she knew it was Frerin all along and we all got whipped for lying.” Her laugh faded in a sigh. “We had so much fun in this place. But it feels so…”

“Dead.” Thorin takes a heavy gulp of wine. “Too many memories of the dead.” The almost-dead. Dís leans back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. “I think I– I tried to get them back, in a way. I thought that coming home would somehow erase everything that’s happened.” He slumps. “Dís, I am so, _so_ sorry. You have to believe me – if I knew back then that this would have happened, I never would have gone. I never would have done any of it. It’s– I don’t know what got into my head. It was like some sickness, and I just… felt so _twisted_ and smothered by it. I forgot everything.”

“He doesn’t blame you, you know that?” She’s still staring up at the ceiling. “He still won’t blame you. He’s so damn loyal to you, Thorin, and in return you think you can just shut him away in a cupboard.” Dís turns to look at him now, but Thorin’s staring into his half-empty wine, shrivelling under her cutting gaze. “He would have been such a good king. No one has both reason and heart like he does. He would have been greater than any of our ancestors could have dreamed. And you took that away from him.” Knowing that cuts Thorin deeper than any blade or tooth or claw could have ever reach. He’s so hunched, so diminished and empty, clinging pathetically to his drink as though it will somehow save him. “And he still doesn’t blame you. He’s the only one with any right. Mahal, it feels hollow to hold onto any anger when Fili’s already let go of it. But it doesn’t matter how I feel. I could curse you for hours and you’d be deaf to every word. You’ll kill yourself with your own guilt and not give a fig for what I think of you.”

“Is this your way of saying you forgive me?” He whispers, brittle. Dís always had a way of tearing people down in her anger, tongue sharp as an orcish whip and eyes flashing fire. He’d sooner get bring blood from a stone than an apology from his sister. She only retreated to scorn like this when she’d been defeated, too proud to lower herself an inch when she felt in the right.

Dís chuckles as she drains her vessel, a drop of wine rolling from the corner of her mouth, gleaming red as blood. Thorin really knows her. Every thought, every fantasy, every word that she couldn’t bring herself to utter. He’s all that’s left, in a way. All her old allies – Thror, Thrain, Frerin, her mother, her husband, they’re all gone. Thorin is all she has to remind her of her girlhood, her youth, the innocence that burned in dragon’s flame and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. “I suppose it is.”

* * *

 Four people have seen Fili undressed since his fall – Kili, Ori, his mother, and now Tauriel. It’s Sigrid who suggested this. After all, Tauriel did a wonderful job of healing Kili from his near-fatal wound. What harm was there in having a look? She’d pestered him for weeks until Fili finally relented, mainly so he wouldn’t have to see her pretty mouth all twisted up in that dour pout. There was one condition – no one else was to be in the room, not even Kili. This had to be private, for Fili to come to terms with on his own.

He can’t see her face; his cheek is pressed against the pillow, and all he can see is the dim outline of a carved side table and a distant tapestry over the swell of blue silk. She could have a knife in her hand, ready to cut his throat, and he’d be defenceless. Part of him is almost certain that she would take the chance. They haven’t been alone together since Fili accused her of loving his brother and promised to destroy her if she ever loved him in kind. He was afraid that she’d kill him then, too, he remembers, closing his eyes. And she’s broken the vow she made to Fili since. She’s defeated him.

“Breathe.” She commands softly, sweeping the blonde curtain of hair off his shoulders and neck, combing it with her fingers. It’s smoother than Kili’s, well-washed, braided cleanly, the curls tight from months of damp indoor air, springing back at her touch. “Can you… Just try and imagine a ball in your chest, moving up and down with every breath. Focus on that. Focus on filling your lungs, in and out.” Pressing down, Tauriel feels the dimple of Fili’s skull, the apex of his spine, the ridges of bone in his neck, starved and knobbly. She’s looking for the break. The warmth flows from her hands through Fili’s skin and into muscle and bone. Her energy becomes his, running like water along the mighty river of his spine. Tauriel works the wasted muscles, murmurs soft words of Elvish as she kneads his skin, pouring light and heat and energy into Fili’s broken body.

There it is. Her breath hitches. It’s lower than she thought, much lower. Just above the jut of his shoulderblades. It’s like tumbling into a ravine, down, down, down, into the blackness with no end, and Tauriel pulls away with a gasp, her hands damp and cold as ice. Yes, there’s the scar, through the lingering bruise. No wonder Thranduil couldn’t fix it. That orcish sword would have cut his spine in two. Around the old wound is still stiff and swollen and discoloured even now. Thranduil could have healed this if Thorin had allowed him to return.

“Your spine was cut in half by a sword.” She clears her throat. “Below that, you’ll never get feeling again, but above…” Tauriel touches the back of his neck. “Tell me when you stop feeling my touch.” She runs her fingers down, down, slowly, counting the shards of bone. One, two, three.

“There.” Fili sighs. He’s sure it’s further down than he remembers. Maybe her elf magic did some good after all. “That’s when it goes numb. I’m not imagining it am I? I just feel like– like I have some feeling… coming back. At first, I couldn’t even move my head at all, but now I can lift it up and bed and turn it from side to side almost all the way.” It’s amazing how such a simple movement has increased Fili’s world view. “Is it possible… I don’t know.” Fili groans. “I don’t know what’s possible.”

“I don’t either.” Tauriel admits. “I’ll keep coming back to see if it helps. You might be able to shrug your shoulders in time, maybe even lift your upper arms. I’m sorry, Fili, but I just don’t know. Injuries like this – we don’t treat them. We let them go to their peace and freedom in the Undying Lands. Being crippled is a cage. A fate worse than death.” As soon as it comes out, Tauriel winces, heart thumping hard. Foolish. But she can’t take it back.

“Sometimes I think it is.” Fili sighs heavily, eyes half-lidded, staring out at nothing.

* * *

 Ori sketches in his free time, a half-filled manuscript of drawings dangling from his belt the way priests of Mahal carry their books of prayers and hymns. He draws the hands of dwarves, blackened and sootstained and callused, of maidens, soft and white as milk, of housewives rubbed raw from carbide and soap. He draws the claws of animals, crouching for hours, throwing breadcrumbs and watching the birds swoop and dive. The ravens are bold enough to seize food-scraps from his hands, tiny yellowed toes curling around their prize, and Ori furiously commits every detail onto the page. He draws the gears of machinery, the massive bellows in the forge, the groaning lift that lowers hapless dwarves into the belly of the mountain (more like the arsehole, Nori sneered once, fingering the new gold clasps in his beard), the tiny toys that exist now only in soot-stained pieces, too elaborate for them to replicate again without regaining their old skill.

“What are you drawing?” Fili asks tonelessly one day. They’re sitting in the furnished parlour, Fili tied into his chair, pretending to be interested in the book propped up at his eye level, Ori on a stool beside him. “Copying hands again?”

“No,” Ori leans over to show him. “This is something of my own.” It looks like some sort of inhuman claw strung with wires and pulleys and gears. A torture device. If he could, Fili might have shivered. “I got the idea watching the ravens eat. It reminded me of when I was a dwarrow, real young, and Nori used to get the severed chicken feet before Dori threw them out. He’d chase me around the house pulling on the tendons so its toes would open and close. It used to make me scream, seeing this dead thing move of its own accord. Probably why he did it.” Ori chuckles and looks at his drawing again. “Anyway, I’m thinking that surely it can’t be too hard to replicate in a larger scale. And if these wires were attached to your fingers and hands, then you could be able to close them and hold onto things. So, well… if I made something like this – well, got Bifur to – would you try it?”

At first, he says nothing. No. Of course not. He wasn’t hooking himself up to any contraption of pulleys and wires. Fili imagines himself downstairs in the Great Hall, strapped at attention in his wheeled chair with his hands threaded with iron string, curling and uncurling like a dead chicken. It’s a hot, hateful image and bile rises in his stomach, burning in his throat. No. No.

Sigrid’s indignant words come back to him. She was so upset that he’d resigned himself to this life. Her faith was idealised and naive, the view of an outsider. But a seed of truth lay deep in the core of what she’d said, taking root. He has to fight to be heard again, to regain some kind of place in his uncertain new home. Thorin wants to shut him away, to shield him from the cruelty of the outside world, but Kili and Ori and Mama and Sigrid fight that at every turn. He looks around now in this room, at the sofa before the fire, the deep-seated armchair with leather straps stitched into the frame. It’s made for guests.

Fili breathes in deeply, inhaling fire. It swells in his lungs, burning his insides, sending a shower of sparks through his brain. A heated knife cuts through the fog that’s covered him for months, dulled his senses. He’s tired of being the bedridden invalid. There’s no regaining his place as Thorin’s heir, but he’s not useless. He still sees errors, through Kili’s rushed nightly reports, in the way they’re going about things, missed minutiae in tradition and protocol, contradiction and hypocrisy. And unlike Kili, who fights head-on with no tense of grace or tact, Fili knows how his uncle thinks. Yes. He has to try. For Kili. For Erebor. There was nothing else left but to try.

He smiles. “Do it.”


End file.
